Question

This is a very basic question…quite embarassing, but here goes:

I have a Stopwatch block in C# code. I determine the elapsed time in ticks and then want to convert to ns, ms, s. I know that the Frequency is provided by the Stopwatch class and that it is required for conversion.

Thanks

Answer 1

Stopwatch.Elapsed is a TimeSpan, so you can do myStopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, myStopwatch.Elapsed.TotalSeconds, etc.

// Create new stopwatch
Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();

// Begin timing
stopwatch.Start();

// Do something
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
    Thread.Sleep(1);
}

// Stop timing
stopwatch.Stop();

// Write result
Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed (s): {0}", stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);
Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed (ms): {0}", stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds);
Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed (ns): {0}", stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds * 1000000);

Output:

Time elapsed (s): 2.4976622
Time elapsed (ms): 2497.6622
Time elapsed (ns): 2497662200

Note that stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds returns a long and is thus only precise up to the millisecond, while stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds returns a double and has the same precision as stopwatch.ElapsedTicks, except it’s easier to use. ILSpy shows that TimeSpan.TotalMilliseconds is computed using ticks anyway.