TimeSpan accuracy

[hsachdevah]

Hello,

I am using TimeSpan to calculate the time my program takes.
Here's the code

DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
 
//**my code here
 
DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
span = end.Subtract(start);
 
ResultUserForm.Controls["lblTimer"].Text = string.Concat(span.Milliseconds.ToString(), "ms");

but the time I get in accuracy of 15ms.
I get either 15ms, or 31ms, or 46ms. And sometimes 0ms
I want it to show things like 8ms too, but it shows 0ms.

How to find a solution to this.

[cloud255]

Well you can't really tell your program how long it should take (unless you use actual thread delays) so what is the problem? If the program never takes 8ms to execute then it never takes that amount of time. Also bear in mind that it might be 0 milliseconds but several hundredths of a second may have passed eg:

0:00:00:120 //h:mm:ss

TimeSpan.Milliseconds will never show how many seconds, minutes etc have passed...

As far as the accuracy, this depends on the clock speed at which your CPU is running (I think, my hardware knowledge is pretty limited), if that is the case then a faster CPU will make time measurement more accurate... but with modern machines and the scope of values you want to measure I cant image that the result is incorrect...

[Plater]

You would want to use the .TotalMilliseconds property of a timespan then.
.Milliseconds returns JUST the millisecond portion of the time.
.TotalMilliseconds returns the entire structure in terms of milliseconds

[PRR]

Look into Stopwatch Class . Stopwatch class is used to measure execution time of a method...

MSDN

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch();
        stopWatch.Start();
        Thread.Sleep(10000);
        stopWatch.Stop();
        // Get the elapsed time as a TimeSpan value.
        TimeSpan ts = stopWatch.Elapsed;
 
        // Format and display the TimeSpan value.
        string elapsedTime = String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}.{3:00}",
            ts.Hours, ts.Minutes, ts.Seconds,
            ts.Milliseconds / 10);
        Console.WriteLine(elapsedTime, "RunTime");
    }
}