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Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:08:31 -0500
From: "Peter C. Chapin" <PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu>
Organization: Vermont Technical College
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Subject: Re: Ada.Execution_Time
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Date: 2010-12-16T08:08:31-05:00
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On 2010-12-15 20:14, BrianG wrote:

> Then the package is misnamed too - How is "Execution_Time" not a time?
> Wouldn't tying it explicitly to Real_Time imply some relation to "real
> time" (whether that makes sense or not)?  Using Duration could help
> that, since it's implementation-defined.

To me "execution time" sounds like a measure of how long a program has
run (in some sense). In other words it sounds like some kind of time
interval. "The execution time of this process was 10.102 seconds."

However, people often use "time" to refer to some sort of absolute
clock. "What time is it? It is now 8:07am on 2010-12-16." The basic
confusion is that the term "time" is extremely ambiguous in ordinary
usage. Not only is it used both for time intervals and absolute time
values, but there are several different kinds of time one might talk about.

Peter