Question

I have a requirment to run a while loop the 5 min.
I looked for the timer api but I could not found to do this.
Can any one provide a code snipet for this.

Thanks

Answer 1

The easiest way will be to just check how much time has elapsed on each iteration. Example:

final long NANOSEC_PER_SEC = 1000l*1000*1000;

long startTime = System.nanoTime();
while ((System.nanoTime()-startTime)< 5*60*NANOSEC_PER_SEC){
  // do stuff
}

This will run the loop, until more than 5 minutes have elapsed.

Notes:

1. The current loop iteration will always complete, so in practice it will always run for a bit more than 5 minutes.
2. For this application System.nanoTime() is more suitable than System.currentTimeMillis() because the latter will change if the computer’s system clock is adjusted, thus throwing off the calculation. Thanks to Shloim for pointing this out.