[R] Get current time in numeric form?

[Duncan Murdoch]

As discussed in another thread, the date() function returns the
current date and time (possibly in the wrong time zone on Windows).
What I'm interested in getting is a value that I can do calculations
with, to support animations.  That is, I'd like to get the current
time, do a display, do some calculations, then get the current time
again and calculate the update to the display based on the time
difference.

Do I have to write my own external function, or is this already
available somewhere?  (I could parse date(), but that will only give
me 1 second resolution; I think the system clock will do better on
most systems.)

(I know about system.time(), but I don't think it's quite appropriate:
I don't just want to know how long the first display calculation took,
I need to know the time at the start of the next one.  I'm worried
that there will be slippage if I use system.time().)

Duncan Murdoch
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