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+## Copyright (C) 1996, 1997 John W. Eaton
+##
+## This file is part of Octave.
+##
+## Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
+## any later version.
+##
+## Octave 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
+## General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the Free
+## Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
+## 02110-1301, USA.
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {} etime (@var{t1}, @var{t2})
+## Return the difference (in seconds) between two time values returned from
+## @code{clock}.  For example:
+##
+## @example
+## t0 = clock ();
+## # many computations later...
+## elapsed_time = etime (clock (), t0);
+## @end example
+##
+## @noindent
+## will set the variable @code{elapsed_time} to the number of seconds since
+## the variable @code{t0} was set.
+## @end deftypefn
+##
+## @seealso{tic, toc, clock, and cputime}
+
+## Author: jwe
+
+function secs = etime (t1, t0)
+
+  if (nargin != 2)
+    usage ("etime (t1, t0)");
+  endif
+
+  if (isvector (t1) && length (t1) == 6 && isvector (t0) && length (t0) == 6)
+
+    if (t1 (1) != t0 (1))
+      error ("etime: can't handle timings over year boundaries yet");
+    endif
+
+    ## XXX FIXME XXX -- could check here to ensure that t1 and t0 really do
+    ## make sense as vectors returned from clock().
+
+    days_in_months = [31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31];
+
+    if (is_leap_year (t1 (1)))
+      days_in_months (2) = days_in_months (2) + 1;
+    endif
+
+    d1 = sum (days_in_months (1:(t1 (2) - 1))) + t1 (3);
+    d0 = sum (days_in_months (1:(t0 (2) - 1))) + t0 (3);
+
+    s1 = 86400 * d1 + 3600 * t1 (4) + 60 * t1 (5) + t1 (6);
+    s0 = 86400 * d0 + 3600 * t0 (4) + 60 * t0 (5) + t0 (6);
+
+    secs = s1 - s0;
+
+  else
+    error ("etime: args are not 6-element vectors");
+  endif
+
+
+endfunction