Re: char to numeric

I also use job start time and end time.  Especially on longer running 
jobs.  Determining if was beating the snot out of the processor, or the 
disk, may be important to solving the problem, but the first thing you 
want to know is how long the process is as a whole.  If a job takes 3 
hours to run, but only uses 25 seconds of CPU time, don't tell me to not 
worry about it.

Granted, if your are truly testing the calc time, of a brief calc, and are 
not worried about the job start and stop overhead, then I may do something 
like
     D x               s              5i 0
     D Start           s               z   dim(5)
     D Stop            s               z   dim(%elem(start))
     D Duration        s             10i 0 dim(%elem(start))
     D y               s              5i 0 inz(%elem(start))

      /free
       *inlr=*on;

       For x = 1 to y;  //repeat a set of times to get an average
         Start(x)=%timestamp();
         // your check here
         Stop(x)=%timestamp();
         Duration(x)=%diff(stop(x):Start(x):*mseconds);
         dsply duration(x);
       EndFor;
       Return;
 

Rob Berendt