Question

When I return the string timeTaken, it is null, and it says this on the IDE to, although it has been defined in the main method (TimeSpan timeTaken = timer.Elapsed;)

class Program
{    
    public static string timeTaken;    

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {                
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(firstline);    
        Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
        timer.Start();               
        using (var response = request.GetResponse());
        timer.Stop();    
        TimeSpan timeTaken = timer.Elapsed;
        ...
    }
}            

How can I output timeTaken?

Answer 1

You define a local variable with the same name

TimeSpan timeTaken

which hides your static class field.

To output the value of timer.Elapsed you could write something like this:

Console.WriteLine("{0}", timer.Elapsed);