Lingo in a Nutshell

Timing Utilities

Timers can be used to track user response times, analyze performance, or limit the time spent on an activity, as discussed below. See Chapter 9, Perfomance and Memory, in Director in a Nutshell for optimization tips.

Gauging Performance

Use the type of loop shown in Example 11-8 to gauge Lingo’s performance when trying to optimize your code. For an accurate test, perform the operation enough times, such as 1000, to last a few seconds.

Example 11-8. Timing Performance

on testSpeed
  startTimer
  repeat with x = 1 to 1000
    -- Test performance of something in here....
    set dummy = 5
  end repeat
  put "The test took" && the timer && "ticks"
end

Don’t include put statements within your timing loop as they are very slow and will distort your results. If necessary, store results in a variable and print them out later.

Stop Watch Timer Object

Example 11-9 is a stop watch object and a test script showing its usage. See Chapter 12 for details on object-oriented Scripting.

Here is the Stop Watch Object Parent Script:

property pLastElapsedTime, pRunning, pRunningTime

on new me
  resetStopWatch (me)
  set pRunning = FALSE
  return me
end new

on resetStopWatch me
  set pLastElapsedTime = 0
  set pRunningTime = the ticks
end resetStopWatch

on startStopWatch me
  if not pRunning then
    -- If not already running, record the start time
    set pRunningTime = the ticks
    set pRunning = TRUE
  end if
end startStopWatch

on stopStopWatch me
  if pRunning then
    -- If not already stopped, increment the elapsed time set pLastElapsedTime ...