Nios2 and timer

Hi all forumers !!

I'm totally new to fpgas and I'm trying to get my best !!

But now I really need some suggestions.. I'm implementing a routine in C with quartus that uses a timer but I cannot find how to get it... I need to implement something like that:

#include<time.h>
..... some code here .....
time_t start,now;
time(&start);
seconds = 0;
while seconds < 1 {
     ... do something...
     time(&now);
     seconds=(uint8_t) difftime(now,start);
}

by the way it seems not working... i always get seconds==0.

There is a better way to get it works ??

Thank you for your support !!

Have a nice day !