Lazy Perl stopwatch

Lazy Perl stopwatch November 10, 2004

I needed a quick stopwatch to give me elapsed time on an event. (Making sure a transit took the right amount of time.) Perl to the rescue…

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    # lazy stopwatch. Prints elapsed time each time you hit enter.

    use Time::HiRes qw(gettimeofday tv_interval); #get better than 1 second resolution

    $t0 = [gettimeofday]; # starting time
    while(<STDIN>)
    {
    $t1 = [gettimeofday];
    print tv_interval($t0,$t1); # print elapsed time between enter key hits.
    $t0 = $t1;
    }

So to use it, run it in a shell, hit [Enter] to start timing, [Enter] again to stop, and you’ll see the elapsed time. Ends up looking something like…

Wheee!