/* XXL: The eXtensible and fleXible Library for data processing
Copyright (C) 2000-2011 Prof. Dr. Bernhard Seeger
Head of the Database Research Group
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Marburg
Germany
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
http://code.google.com/p/xxl/
*/
package xxl.core.util.timers;
/**
* The timer interface is the base of efficient timers which are
* based on Ticks as smallest units. Each implementation of this
* interface can have a different number of ticks per second.
*/
public interface Timer {
/**
* Starts the timer.
*/
public void start();
/**
* Returns the time in ticks since the last start-call.
* @return number of ticks
*/
public long getDuration();
/**
* Returns the number of ticks per second.
* @return number of ticks
*/
public long getTicksPerSecond();
/**
* Returns a String with information about the Timer.
* @return timer info
*/
public String timerInfo();
}