Struct std::time::Instant

1.8.0 · source ·
pub struct Instant(/* private fields */);
Expand description

A measurement of a monotonically nondecreasing clock. Opaque and useful only with Duration.

Instants are always guaranteed, barring platform bugs, to be no less than any previously measured instant when created, and are often useful for tasks such as measuring benchmarks or timing how long an operation takes.

Note, however, that instants are not guaranteed to be steady. In other words, each tick of the underlying clock might not be the same length (e.g. some seconds may be longer than others). An instant may jump forwards or experience time dilation (slow down or speed up), but it will never go backwards. As part of this non-guarantee it is also not specified whether system suspends count as elapsed time or not. The behavior varies across platforms and rust versions.

Instants are opaque types that can only be compared to one another. There is no method to get “the number of seconds” from an instant. Instead, it only allows measuring the duration between two instants (or comparing two instants).

The size of an Instant struct may vary depending on the target operating system.

Example:

use std::time::{Duration, Instant};
use std::thread::sleep;

fn main() {
   let now = Instant::now();

   // we sleep for 2 seconds
   sleep(Duration::new(2, 0));
   // it prints '2'
   println!("{}", now.elapsed().as_secs());
}
Run

OS-specific behaviors

An Instant is a wrapper around system-specific types and it may behave differently depending on the underlying operating system. For example, the following snippet is fine on Linux but panics on macOS:

use std::time::{Instant, Duration};

let now = Instant::now();
let max_seconds = u64::MAX / 1_000_000_000;
let duration = Duration::new(max_seconds, 0);
println!("{:?}", now + duration);
Run

Underlying System calls

The following system calls are currently being used by now() to find out the current time:

Disclaimer: These system calls might change over time.

Note: mathematical operations like add may panic if the underlying structure cannot represent the new point in time.

Monotonicity

On all platforms Instant will try to use an OS API that guarantees monotonic behavior if available, which is the case for all tier 1 platforms. In practice such guarantees are – under rare circumstances – broken by hardware, virtualization or operating system bugs. To work around these bugs and platforms not offering monotonic clocks duration_since, elapsed and sub saturate to zero. In older Rust versions this lead to a panic instead. checked_duration_since can be used to detect and handle situations where monotonicity is violated, or Instants are subtracted in the wrong order.

This workaround obscures programming errors where earlier and later instants are accidentally swapped. For this reason future rust versions may reintroduce panics.

Implementations§

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impl Instant

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pub fn now() -> Instant

Returns an instant corresponding to “now”.

Examples
use std::time::Instant;

let now = Instant::now();
Run
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pub fn duration_since(&self, earlier: Instant) -> Duration

Returns the amount of time elapsed from another instant to this one, or zero duration if that instant is later than this one.

Panics

Previous rust versions panicked when earlier was later than self. Currently this method saturates. Future versions may reintroduce the panic in some circumstances. See Monotonicity.

Examples
use std::time::{Duration, Instant};
use std::thread::sleep;

let now = Instant::now();
sleep(Duration::new(1, 0));
let new_now = Instant::now();
println!("{:?}", new_now.duration_since(now));
println!("{:?}", now.duration_since(new_now)); // 0ns
Run
1.39.0 · source

pub fn checked_duration_since(&self, earlier: Instant) -> Option<Duration>

Returns the amount of time elapsed from another instant to this one, or None if that instant is later than this one.

Due to monotonicity bugs, even under correct logical ordering of the passed Instants, this method can return None.

Examples
use std::time::{Duration, Instant};
use std::thread::sleep;

let now = Instant::now();
sleep(Duration::new(1, 0));
let new_now = Instant::now();
println!("{:?}", new_now.checked_duration_since(now));
println!("{:?}", now.checked_duration_since(new_now)); // None
Run
1.39.0 · source

pub fn saturating_duration_since(&self, earlier: Instant) -> Duration

Returns the amount of time elapsed from another instant to this one, or zero duration if that instant is later than this one.

Examples
use std::time::{Duration, Instant};
use std::thread::sleep;

let now = Instant::now();
sleep(Duration::new(1, 0));
let new_now = Instant::now();
println!("{:?}", new_now.saturating_duration_since(now));
println!("{:?}", now.saturating_duration_since(new_now)); // 0ns
Run
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pub fn elapsed(&self) -> Duration

Returns the amount of time elapsed since this instant.

Panics

Previous rust versions panicked when the current time was earlier than self. Currently this method returns a Duration of zero in that case. Future versions may reintroduce the panic. See Monotonicity.

Examples
use std::thread::sleep;
use std::time::{Duration, Instant};

let instant = Instant::now();
let three_secs = Duration::from_secs(3);
sleep(three_secs);
assert!(instant.elapsed() >= three_secs);
Run
1.34.0 · source

pub fn checked_add(&self, duration: Duration) -> Option<Instant>

Returns Some(t) where t is the time self + duration if t can be represented as Instant (which means it’s inside the bounds of the underlying data structure), None otherwise.

1.34.0 · source

pub fn checked_sub(&self, duration: Duration) -> Option<Instant>

Returns Some(t) where t is the time self - duration if t can be represented as Instant (which means it’s inside the bounds of the underlying data structure), None otherwise.

Trait Implementations§

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impl Add<Duration> for Instant

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fn add(self, other: Duration) -> Instant

Panics

This function may panic if the resulting point in time cannot be represented by the underlying data structure. See Instant::checked_add for a version without panic.

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type Output = Instant

The resulting type after applying the + operator.
1.9.0 · source§

impl AddAssign<Duration> for Instant

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fn add_assign(&mut self, other: Duration)

Performs the += operation. Read more
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impl Clone for Instant

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fn clone(&self) -> Instant

Returns a copy of the value. Read more
1.0.0 · source§

fn clone_from(&mut self, source: &Self)

Performs copy-assignment from source. Read more
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impl Debug for Instant

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fn fmt(&self, f: &mut Formatter<'_>) -> Result

Formats the value using the given formatter. Read more
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impl Hash for Instant

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fn hash<__H: Hasher>(&self, state: &mut __H)

Feeds this value into the given Hasher. Read more
1.3.0 · source§

fn hash_slice<H>(data: &[Self], state: &mut H)where H: Hasher, Self: Sized,

Feeds a slice of this type into the given Hasher. Read more
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impl Ord for Instant

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fn cmp(&self, other: &Instant) -> Ordering

This method returns an Ordering between self and other. Read more
1.21.0 · source§

fn max(self, other: Self) -> Selfwhere Self: Sized,

Compares and returns the maximum of two values. Read more
1.21.0 · source§

fn min(self, other: Self) -> Selfwhere Self: Sized,

Compares and returns the minimum of two values. Read more
1.50.0 · source§

fn clamp(self, min: Self, max: Self) -> Selfwhere Self: Sized + PartialOrd<Self>,

Restrict a value to a certain interval. Read more
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impl PartialEq<Instant> for Instant

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fn eq(&self, other: &Instant) -> bool

This method tests for self and other values to be equal, and is used by ==.
1.0.0 · source§

fn ne(&self, other: &Rhs) -> bool

This method tests for !=. The default implementation is almost always sufficient, and should not be overridden without very good reason.
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impl PartialOrd<Instant> for Instant

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fn partial_cmp(&self, other: &Instant) -> Option<Ordering>

This method returns an ordering between self and other values if one exists. Read more
1.0.0 · source§

fn lt(&self, other: &Rhs) -> bool

This method tests less than (for self and other) and is used by the < operator. Read more
1.0.0 · source§

fn le(&self, other: &Rhs) -> bool

This method tests less than or equal to (for self and other) and is used by the <= operator. Read more
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fn gt(&self, other: &Rhs) -> bool

This method tests greater than (for self and other) and is used by the > operator. Read more
1.0.0 · source§

fn ge(&self, other: &Rhs) -> bool

This method tests greater than or equal to (for self and other) and is used by the >= operator. Read more
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impl Sub<Duration> for Instant

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type Output = Instant

The resulting type after applying the - operator.
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fn sub(self, other: Duration) -> Instant

Performs the - operation. Read more
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impl Sub<Instant> for Instant

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fn sub(self, other: Instant) -> Duration

Returns the amount of time elapsed from another instant to this one, or zero duration if that instant is later than this one.

Panics

Previous rust versions panicked when other was later than self. Currently this method saturates. Future versions may reintroduce the panic in some circumstances. See Monotonicity.

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type Output = Duration

The resulting type after applying the - operator.
1.9.0 · source§

impl SubAssign<Duration> for Instant

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fn sub_assign(&mut self, other: Duration)

Performs the -= operation. Read more
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impl Copy for Instant

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impl Eq for Instant

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impl StructuralEq for Instant

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impl StructuralPartialEq for Instant

Auto Trait Implementations§

Blanket Implementations§

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impl<T> Any for Twhere T: 'static + ?Sized,

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fn type_id(&self) -> TypeId

Gets the TypeId of self. Read more
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impl<T> Borrow<T> for Twhere T: ?Sized,

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fn borrow(&self) -> &T

Immutably borrows from an owned value. Read more
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impl<T> BorrowMut<T> for Twhere T: ?Sized,

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fn borrow_mut(&mut self) -> &mut T

Mutably borrows from an owned value. Read more
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impl<T> From<T> for T

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fn from(t: T) -> T

Returns the argument unchanged.

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impl<T, U> Into<U> for Twhere U: From<T>,

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fn into(self) -> U

Calls U::from(self).

That is, this conversion is whatever the implementation of From<T> for U chooses to do.

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impl<T> ToOwned for Twhere T: Clone,

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type Owned = T

The resulting type after obtaining ownership.
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fn to_owned(&self) -> T

Creates owned data from borrowed data, usually by cloning. Read more
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fn clone_into(&self, target: &mut T)

Uses borrowed data to replace owned data, usually by cloning. Read more
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impl<T, U> TryFrom<U> for Twhere U: Into<T>,

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type Error = Infallible

The type returned in the event of a conversion error.
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fn try_from(value: U) -> Result<T, <T as TryFrom<U>>::Error>

Performs the conversion.
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impl<T, U> TryInto<U> for Twhere U: TryFrom<T>,

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type Error = <U as TryFrom<T>>::Error

The type returned in the event of a conversion error.
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fn try_into(self) -> Result<U, <U as TryFrom<T>>::Error>

Performs the conversion.