MonotonicTickCount

Implements a PORO that can be used for monotonic timestamping. It wraps a count of fractional seconds (or ticks) that can be initialized to the system monotonic clock via the .now method or to any float you supply. It implements the comparable interface and arithmetic operators for calculating offsets and differences.

For an explanation as to why this is preferrable to using the wall clock for timing calculations, see this blog post.

Comparing two monotonic timestamps

tick_count_a = MonotonicTickCount.now
tick_count_b = tick_count_a + 15.minutes
tick_count_a < tick_count_b => true
tick_count_b - tick_count_a => 900.0

Finding the elapsed seconds of a block

return_val, elapsed_seconds = MonotonicTickCount.timer do |start_tick|
  sleep(10)
  1
end
return_val      => 1
elapsed_seconds => 10.0

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'monotonic_tick_count'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install monotonic_tick_count

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/monotonic_tick_count.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.