C# – Stopwatch elapsed output

I had some code that crunched a lot of data, so I started it on Thursday and left it running over the weekend. On Monday, I have come back and seen that it finished. I used a stopwatch function to track the length of time the code ran for. However, I ended up with

Elapsed: 2.18:57:55.xxx

I understand that it's output is normally H:M:SS, but don't understand the first digit, especially since it's been running for days. Did it just convert from hours to days? Did I leave it running so long that it broke?

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean that it finished on Monday. I just meant that BY Monday (when I returned to the computer), it was done.

Best Answer

Yes - that's the format of TimeSpan.ToString:

The returned string is formatted with the "c" format specifier and has the following format:

[-][d.]hh:mm:ss[.fffffff]

Elements in square brackets ([ and ]) may not be included in the returned string. Colons and periods (: and.) are literal characters. The non-literal elements are listed in the following table. Note that the string returned by the ToString() method is not culture-sensitive.

Since there's not a format specifier that shows total hours, you'll need to calculate it. If you want the hours to be shown as a single number then use:

TimeSpan ts = new TimeSpan(2,18,57,55);
    
var output = string.Format("{0}:{1}",
                           ts.Days*24 + ts.Hours,
                           ts.ToString("mm\\:ss\\.ffff"));

//output =  `66:57:55.0000`

Related Solutions

C# – Process.start: how to get the output

When you create your Process object set StartInfo appropriately:

var proc = new Process 
{
    StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
    {
        FileName = "program.exe",
        Arguments = "command line arguments to your executable",
        UseShellExecute = false,
        RedirectStandardOutput = true,
        CreateNoWindow = true
    }
};

then start the process and read from it:

proc.Start();
while (!proc.StandardOutput.EndOfStream)
{
    string line = proc.StandardOutput.ReadLine();
    // do something with line
}

You can use int.Parse() or int.TryParse() to convert the strings to numeric values. You may have to do some string manipulation first if there are invalid numeric characters in the strings you read.

C# – Time Elapsed/StopWatch

I'm not sure if this causes your problem, but you should use int instead of double, as the TimeSpan members are int anyway. Comparing double to an exact number can cause problems

        int hours = ts_timeElapsed.Hours;
        int mins = ts_timeElapsed.Minutes;
        int secs = ts_timeElapsed.Seconds;

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Process.start: how to get the output

C# – Time Elapsed/StopWatch

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