ETIME:  Keep track of elapsed time

   ssc install etime , replace

Programmer:  Dan Blanchette ()
Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Duke University's Fuqua School of Business
Durham, NC  USA
Developed at The Carolina Population Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Date:  30Sep2003
Last updated:  09Jul2008

---

Time how long a program runs; or, simply, keep track of the elapsed time from point A to point B in a program

etime [ , start datestart(start date) timestart(start time)]

etime is designed for programmers who want to keep track of how long a program takes to run.  Using Stata's creturn macro variables:
c(current_date) and c(current_time), etime clocks the difference in time between calls.  Like a stopwatch, etime needs to be started and stopped.  The second and following times etime is submitted it displays a message that says how long it has been since the first time etime was submitted (in the current Stata session).

start specifies to set or reset etime.  Not specifying start is equivalent to ending or simply checking the elapsed time.

Options datestart() and timestart() need to be used when timing a command that runs etime.

datestart specifies to etime to use this start date.  The date must be in the %dD_m_cy format like:  10 Jul 2008 which is the format of c(current_date).  If you specify a start date you also have to specify time.

timestart specifies to etime to use this start time.  The time must be in hr:min:sec format like:  14:20:58 which is the format of c(current_time).  If you specify a start time but not the start date, the current date will be used.

etime creates global macros $etime_stardate_ and $etime_startime_ .

 . etime, start

 . etime

Displays:

    Elapsed time is 2 hours 27 minutes 3 seconds

 . local date `c(current_date)'

 . local time `c(current_time)'

 . etime, d(`date') t(`time')

 . etime, d(10 Jul 2008) t(03:48:14)

The etime command saves in s():

On-line:  log, datefun, creturn, profiler, rmsg, timer