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<header><title>Export Tcl_GetTime in the Public API</title><author address="mailto:kennykb@acm.org">Kevin Kenny</author><status type='project' state='final' tclversion="8.4" vote='after'>$Revision: 1.4 $</status><history></history><created day='3' month='nov' year='2001' /></header>
<abstract>This TIP proposes that the existing <emph style="italic">TclpGetTime</emph> function be renamed to be <emph style="italic">Tcl_GetTime</emph> and included in the published API.</abstract>
<body><section title="Rationale">
<para>The Tcl library provides a uniform abstraction, <emph style="italic">TclpGetTime</emph> that is implemented on each of the platforms to retrieve absolute time in a <emph style="italic">Tcl_Time</emph> object. This function is highly useful outside the Tcl library itself, since it hides a very complex set of interfaces, particularly on Windows, where several hundred lines of code enable its use for high-precision measurements. For this reason, it ought to be made part of the public API.</para>
</section>
<section title="Proposed Change">
<para>The existing <emph style="italic">TclpGetTime</emph> procedure shall be renamed to be <emph style="italic">Tcl_GetTime</emph>, and its declaration shall be added to <emph style="italic">tcl.decls</emph>.</para>
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<para>A definition of <emph style="italic">TclpGetTime</emph> as a stub procedure that simply invokes <emph style="italic">Tcl_GetTime</emph> shall be retained in <emph style="italic">tclInt.decls</emph> for compatibility with existing Stubs-enabled extensions that invoke it.</para>
<para>This change requires no other change to the public headers; the <emph style="italic">Tcl_Time</emph> structure is already exported in <emph style="italic">tcl.h</emph>.</para>
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<section title="Copyright">
<para>Copyright © 2001 by Kevin B. Kenny. Distribution in whole or part, with or without annotations, is unlimited.</para>
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