It was thus said that the Great Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> once stated:

It's slightly faster than the original on 4tH:
real 0m5,527s
user 0m5,522s
sys 0m0,004s

Opcodes: his: 39, yours: 37

I think I am in a unique position to get an exact cycle count of the
various attempts due to cycle emulation of the CPU my ANS Forth implemention targets (the 6809, an 8-bit CPU). I ran the three versions LIT presented,
plus the version he said was Mr. Fifo's. I also ran dxf's version. Each version included the following word:

: FOO S" 12:34:56" TIMESTRSCAN D. ;

and I recorded the number CPU cycles the following line took to run:

FOO BYE

The results:

dxf cycles=75453
fifo cycles=85658
LIT#1 cycles=78642
LIT#2 cycles=78714
LIT#3 cycles=78720

I also ran miniforth's version, and timed this the line:

HMS 12:34:56 .S BYE

It was not fast:

minforth cycles=834951

Make of this what you will.

-spc

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There may be several issues on a real computer which make
these considerations immaterial:

ANEW -timescan

: dtimescan ( addr count -- d )
over swap + >r >r
0. r> 0
begin
over r@ <
while
over c@ ':'
= if swap >r s>d d+ #60 1 m*/ r> 0
else #10 * over c@ [char] 0 - +
endif
swap 1+ swap
repeat
-r nip s>d d+ ;

: timestrscan ( addr count -- d )
1 1 LOCALS| c6 c1 |
0. 2SWAP
OVER + 1- ?DO
I C@ DUP ':' =
IF DROP
c6 #60 * TO c6
1 TO C1
ELSE '0' - C1 * C6 M* D+
#10 TO C1
ENDIF
-1 +LOOP ;

: TEST ( -- )
CR ." \ dtimescan : " S" 12:34:56" TICKS-RESET dtimescan
TICKS? UD. ." clock ticks elapsed, " UD.
CR ." \ timestrscan : " S" 12:34:56" TICKS-RESET timestrscan
TICKS? UD. ." clock ticks elapsed, " UD. ;

TEST

FORTH> in
\ dtimescan : 1258 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ timestrscan : 419 clock ticks elapsed, 45296 ok
FORTH> TEST TEST TEST
\ dtimescan : 1258 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ timestrscan : 419 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ dtimescan : 419 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ timestrscan : 420 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ dtimescan : 419 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
\ timestrscan : 420 clock ticks elapsed, 45296
FORTH>

A 'clock tick' is approximately 0.2ns.

-marcel

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On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 5:07:54 +0000, sean@conman.org wrote:

I also ran miniforth's version, and timed this the line:

HMS 12:34:56 .S BYE

It was not fast:

minforth cycles=834951

Make of this what you will.

But software development time about 1 minute including
typing. :o) And no bugs in the first trial run.

--

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