"run" + "time" = ???

This brief post records Mike's description of the three ways of combining the words "run" and "time" in computer science writing.

Here's a writing tip that Mike Ernst gave me a while back. Every time I want to remind myself of it, I have to dig through my email. So here it is in Google-able fashion.

There are three variants of the word "run time" in computer science:

• run-time --- adjective ("the run-time performance")
• run time --- noun --- a moment in time ("occurs at run time"), or an amount of time ("the run time is 8 hours")
• runtime --- noun --- a program that runs/supports another program ("the runtime handles memory allocation"); a synonym for "runtime system"