Apart from that, note that the multimedia timer is intentionally implemented as a windows message and is throttled to prevent it taking over the GUI, since mIRC is a single-threaded application. This means it is subject to all kinds of delays, eg. there are 50+ other timer-based features/events that are also vying for control. The script parser speed is also subject to the whims of the windows memory allocator. So timers at the level of single-digit millisecond times are unlikely to be consistent.
I didn't say anything about timers
But I've been working with fast multimedia timers in mIRC for a long time, I've seen them evolving.
Back in the days, the best scripters were saying that /timer -ho 1 0 was a way to execute something immediately after the end of the script, well that's certainly not true anymore
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and is throttled to prevent it taking over the GUI, since mIRC is a single-threaded application. This means it is subject to all kinds of delays, eg. there are 50+ other timer-based features/events that are also vying for control.
Right, about that, I have a few observations to make:
-I believe the throttle is on 5ms
-I assume most other timer based features are there only when you're connected to a server.
Now:
//set -u2 %t $ticksqpc | .timer -ho 50 1 echo -sg $!calc($ticksqpc - % $+ t ) $(|) set -u2 % $+ t $!ticksqpcFor me on windows 10, I get (connected to one server) :
2, 5, 4, 3, 4, 4, 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 3, 5, 5, 3, 5, 5, 5, 2, 4, 6, 4, 4, 1, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5....
I'm not sure how the throttle is meant to work but if it's supposed to make the next trigger under 5ms impossible, it's not really working (you can even get 0ms sometimes in there), can you elaborate on these timings ?
And it was discussed before but the -c switch (added to -ho) allows one to completely bypass this throttle and get results where most of the results will show 0ms, with '-cho N 0' you get several calls to your alias within the same millisecond.
Meaning that if someone wants a repeated 3ms timer, they can use -cho with 1ms and then do the math with $ticksqpc, and probably get a better result than with -ho N 3, though it's much heavier for mIRC to handle.
