Write a C++ Program to Calculate Difference Between Two Time Period

When working with time, it is often necessary to calculate the difference between two time periods. In C++, this can be achieved by utilizing the built-in time and date functions provided by the standard library.

To calculate the difference between two time periods, we first need to define the start and end times.

We can do this by using the time_point and duration classes provided by the chrono library.

The time_point class represents a point in time and the duration class represents a time duration.

To define the start and end times, we can create two time_point objects and assign them the current time using the system_clock::now() function. For example:

std::chrono::time_point<std::chrono::system_clock> start = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
std::chrono::time_point<std::chrono::system_clock> end = std::chrono::system_clock::now();

Once we have defined the start and end times, we can calculate the difference between them by subtracting the start time from the end time.

We can use the duration_cast function to convert the duration between the two time points to a specific time unit, such as seconds or milliseconds.

For example:

std::chrono::duration<double> elapsed_seconds = end - start;
std::cout << "Elapsed time: " << std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::seconds>(elapsed_seconds).count() << " seconds\n";

This code snippet calculates the difference between the start and end times in seconds and outputs the result to the console.

In summary, calculating the difference between two time periods in C++ can be achieved by utilizing the time_point and duration classes provided by the chrono library.