CLOCKS_PER_SEC

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <11580019 at hpisod2.HP.COM> decot at hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot) writes:
>The correct move would have been for the ANSI committee to use some other
>function name other than clock(), so that units of CLK_TCK could still be
>returned by it, since such units are more logical.

Not really, because the scheduler clock relevant for times() is usually
coarser-grained than an available system timer as relevant for clock().

>Unfortunately, the ANSI committee decided that renaming the clock()
>function would be too major a change (even though incompatibly changing
>the functionality wasn't), ...

clock() and times() both already existed and their units were already
incompatible.  X3J11 did not change the functionality of clock();
rather, we restored its original meaning (in accordance with early
drafts and existing practice) to correct the inadvertent change in
functionality we had introduced when we first borrowed CLK_TCK from
the /usr/group library base document (or was it directly from 1003.1?).

>I still wish they would rename the function so that it would be useful
>and so that clock_t would not have two entirely different meanings.

Yes, for a while 1003.1 was using ttime_t.  What happened to that?
Did the X3J11 misuse of CLK_TCK mislead P1003 into changing to clock_t?