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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} {} tic ()
+## @deftypefnx {Function File} {} toc ()
+## These functions set and check a wall-clock timer.  For example,
+##
+## @example
+## tic ();
+## # many computations later...
+## elapsed_time = toc ();
+## @end example
+##
+## @noindent
+## will set the variable @code{elapsed_time} to the number of seconds since
+## the most recent call to the function @code{tic}.
+##
+## Nested timing with @code{tic} and @code{toc} is not supported.
+## Therefore @code{toc} will always return the elapsed time from the most
+## recent call to @code{tic}.
+##
+## If you are more interested in the CPU time that your process used, you
+## should use the @code{cputime} function instead.  The @code{tic} and
+## @code{toc} functions report the actual wall clock time that elapsed
+## between the calls.  This may include time spent processing other jobs or
+## doing nothing at all.  For example,
+##
+## @example
+## @group
+## tic (); sleep (5); toc ()
+##      @result{} 5
+## t = cputime (); sleep (5); cputime () - t
+##      @result{} 0
+## @end group
+## @end example
+##
+## @noindent
+## (This example also illustrates that the CPU timer may have a fairly
+## coarse resolution.)
+## @end deftypefn
+
+## Author: jwe
+
+function tic ()
+
+  if (nargin != 0)
+    warning ("tic: ignoring extra arguments");
+  endif
+
+  global __tic_toc_timestamp__;
+
+  __tic_toc_timestamp__ = clock ();
+
+endfunction