Checks the value of the system clock.
checkTmr(time)
Menu Location
This command can't be found in any menu besides the command catalog.
This command requires a calculator with AMS version 2.07 or higher (it will also work on any TI-89 Titanium or Voyage 200 calculator)
2 bytes
The checkTmr() command, together with startTmr() uses the built-in system clock to measure the time (in seconds) that passed between two points of the program. Make sure that the clock is on (with ClockOn before using these).
The name of the commands reflects their use: you can think of a startTmr() call as creating and starting a timer:
:startTmr()→timer
The checkTmr() command will then return the number of seconds that have elapsed on the timer (without stopping it):
:Disp "Seconds elapsed:",checkTmr(timer)
This is a good abstraction and you don't need to know the details of how startTmr() and checkTmr() work to use them. In reality, what startTmr() actually returns is the current value of a system timer (which increases by 1 every second). The checkTmr() command does the same thing, but subtracts its parameter: so checkTmr(x) is equivalent to startTmr()-x.
Because both startTmr() and checkTmr() deal with whole numbers of seconds, the resulting difference in time could be off by up to a second in either direction. That is, if checkTmr() gives 15 seconds as the time, you know the time that actually passed is between 14 and 16 seconds.
Advanced Uses
The startTmr() and checkTmr() commands can be used to figure out how much time a command or routine takes with much greater precisions by running it multiple times. For example:
:startTmr()→t
:For i,1,1000
: somecmd()
:Disp checkTmr(t)
Suppose that the result displayed was 100 seconds. This is accurate to 1 second, so the actual time was between 99 and 101 seconds. However, this actual time is for 1000 repetitions of somecmd() (we assume that the time the code takes to increment i is negligible, although that may also be taken into account). So somecmd() repeated only once takes between 99/1000 and 101/1000 seconds, so the actual time is 100 ms, measured to within 1 millisecond error.
See Code Timings for more information on this, as well as the results of some common comparisons.