Rate counter: Difference between revisions

Function PROGRESSNOTE is invoked at the start of the iteration, with its first parameter stating how many steps have been completed (initially, none: this restarts its timers) and the second indicates how many are to be made. The function notes whether sufficient clock time has elapsed since its previous report (more than six seconds, for example) and if so, returns ''true'' after starting an output line with a standard report giving an estimated time to run and an estimated time (and date, if not the current day) of completion. This line is not terminated; the invoking routine providesappends its own progress message, tailored to the nature of the task it is working through. For instance,

Thus, the user waiting at the computer screen can monitor the rate of progress and know to go for a walk, or not.

Incidentally, on windows systems at least, frequent invocations of the date and time routine can cause execution to run ''much'' slower, or crash the systemworse. A loop waiting for the system's DATE_AND_TIME result to attain a specified value will instead cause a crash.