ever is via *NextBASIC* and it's the aptly named function **TIME$**. Let's examine both as the first method can be used for several other *NextZXOS* facilities that return information for which *NextBASIC* doesn't yet have a specialised keyword. We need to use the *NextZXOS* facilities of *Channels* and *Streams* (which we will explore in *Chapter 20*) and specifically, *Channel* **v** (which opens a *stream* to a fixed sized variable **t$**) ``` DIM t$(100):OPEN #2,"v>t$":.TIME :CLOSE #2:PRINT t$ ``` then by string slicing **t$** as seen in depth in *Chapter 7*, we can extract the information we need to use **.time** (or **.date**) in our programs. ### TIME$ Function **TIME$** does the exact thing as the example above but in a much cleaner way and moreover, the user does not need to get only time or date separately as with **TIME$** you get them both simultaneously. For example typing: ``` PRINT TIME$ ``` will return a string of the format *yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss* like: ``` 2023-05-10 16:55:32 ``` which is obviously easy to slice and get the information from. Now we already discussed that a frame lasts a different amount of time depending on if your computer is running at 50Hz or at 60Hz. Here's a revised program that finds out what frequency you're running on first and then tests against the amount of **PAUSE** frames you'll request. Do not pay attention to the **REG** function, we will explain it in *Chapter 22*. ``` 10 sp=REG 5&@100>>2 20 PRINT "I'm running at ";sp?("50","60");Hz" 30 INPUT "How many PAUSE frames? ";f 40 PRINT 50 PROC gettime() TO H1,M1,S1 60 PRINT "Testing at ";sp?("50","60"); "Hz started at:";H1;":";M1;":";S1 70 TIME 80 PROC PerfTest(f) 90 PRINT '"PerfTest() took ";TIME;" frames against desired ";f;" PAUSE frames." 100 PROC GetTime() TO H2, M2, S2 ```