Date.prototype.getTime

[John Cowan]

P T Withington scripsit:

> Date.tick:  getter returning an integer that increases linearly with  
> elapsed time and is guaranteed to increase by at least 1 when  
> accessed successively.  (I.e., can be used to measure the elapsed  
> time of a trivial expression.)
> 
> Date.tickScale:  float that is the ratio of Date.tick units to  
> nanoseconds.

This is problematic.  In order to guarantee the given property of
Date.tick (that successive calls return distinct values), the
tick scale will have to be fine-grained enough that its results
will readily overflow the integral range of an IEEE double.

Unless you mean that the first call to Date.tick in a given
program may return 0, in which case there is no problem.

-- 
We are lost, lost.  No name, no business, no Precious, nothing.  Only empty.
Only hungry: yes, we are hungry.  A few little fishes, nassty bony little
fishes, for a poor creature, and they say death.  So wise they are; so just,
so very just.  --Gollum        cowan at ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan