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Date:      Tue, 4 Sep 2001 13:20:01 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Bernd Luevelsmeyer <bdluevel@heitec.net>
To:        freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: misc/30297: CLOCKS_PER_SEC non-standard
Message-ID:  <200109042020.f84KK1V43324@freefall.freebsd.org>

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The following reply was made to PR misc/30297; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Bernd Luevelsmeyer <bdluevel@heitec.net>
To: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG,
	David Malone <dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: misc/30297: CLOCKS_PER_SEC non-standard
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2001 22:11:44 +0200

 Bruce Evans wrote:
 >  On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Bernd Luevelsmeyer wrote:
 > 
 >  > >Description:
 >  > CLOCKS_PER_SEC in the #include-file <time.h> is 128.
 >  > "The Single UNIX Specification" at
 >  > http://www.UNIX-systems.org/online.html however says
 >  > "CLOCKS_PER_SEC is defined to be one million in <time.h>", and
 >  > the Red Hat Linux 7.2 manpage says "POSIX requires
 >  > that CLOCKS_PER_SEC equals 1000000 independent of the actual
 >  > resolution."
 > 
 >  This is an XSI extension.  In POSIX, CLOCKS_PER_SECOND can be any
 >  (arithmetic) (r)value, the same as in ISO C.  Even in XSI, applications
 >  should not use this misfeature.  From POSIX.1-200x draft7:
 > 
 >  13691 XSI           Although the value of CLOCKS_PER_SEC is required to be 1 million on all XSI-conformant
 >  13692               systems, it may be variable on other systems, and it should not be assumed that
 >  13693               CLOCKS_PER_SEC is a compile-time constant.
 > 
 >  Constants like this shouldn't be standardized.  A resolution of only 1
 >  part in a million is is potentially inadequate by a factor of about 1000
 >  even for today's 1GHz systems.  POSIX's clock_getres() is similarly broken
 >  as designed.
 
 
 Thanks for your explanations. I'm retracting the PR; please close
 it.
 
 Perhaps a comment in either the header file or the clock(3) man page
 might be appropriate, in order to prevent someone else from raising
 the issue again? I suggest to put it into the clock.3 "Standards"
 section.
 
 --- clock.3.old Tue Sep  4 22:02:01 2001
 +++ lib/libc/gen/clock.3     Tue Sep  4 22:04:08 2001
 @@ -69,3 +69,6 @@
  .Fn clock
  function conforms to
  .St -isoC .
 +CLOCKS_PER_SEC is not 1 million (as required by XSI), because
 +this may be inadequate even on today's 1 GHz systems, and anyway
 +it's not a POSIX requirement.

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