interface HRTime

Call Signatures #

(time?: [number, number]): [number, number]

This is the legacy version of process.hrtime.bigint() before bigint was introduced in JavaScript.

The process.hrtime() method returns the current high-resolution real time in a [seconds, nanoseconds] tuple Array, where nanoseconds is the remaining part of the real time that can't be represented in second precision.

time is an optional parameter that must be the result of a previous process.hrtime() call to diff with the current time. If the parameter passed in is not a tuple Array, a TypeError will be thrown. Passing in a user-defined array instead of the result of a previous call to process.hrtime() will lead to undefined behavior.

These times are relative to an arbitrary time in the past, and not related to the time of day and therefore not subject to clock drift. The primary use is for measuring performance between intervals:

const { hrtime } = require('node:process');
const NS_PER_SEC = 1e9;
const time = hrtime();
// [ 1800216, 25 ]

setTimeout(() => {
  const diff = hrtime(time);
  // [ 1, 552 ]

  console.log(`Benchmark took ${diff[0] * NS_PER_SEC + diff[1]} nanoseconds`);
  // Benchmark took 1000000552 nanoseconds
}, 1000);

Methods #

#bigint(): bigint

The bigint version of the process.hrtime() method returning the current high-resolution real time in nanoseconds as a bigint.

Unlike process.hrtime(), it does not support an additional time argument since the difference can just be computed directly by subtraction of the two bigints.

import { hrtime } from 'node:process';

const start = hrtime.bigint();
// 191051479007711n

setTimeout(() => {
  const end = hrtime.bigint();
  // 191052633396993n

  console.log(`Benchmark took ${end - start} nanoseconds`);
  // Benchmark took 1154389282 nanoseconds
}, 1000);