Start tag. The starting element will basically record a timestamp in the memory. The following actions are required to do it in C programming on a Linux system: Status Timer::runnableComments(const TFACommentInfo& cleanComment, std::string& replacement) { const std::vector<std::string> params = comment.getParams(); if (params[0] == "start" && params.size() == 2) { std::string start = "timer_start_" + params[1]; std::string stop = "timer_stop_" + params[1]; replacement = "struct timespec " + start + ", " + stop + ";\n"; replacement += "\tclock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &timer_start_" + params[1] + ");\n";