How do I write a timestamp that is more accurate than milliseconds?

[erotavlas]

Hi,
I have a program that is listening for messages on a port and writes each message to a separate file. I'm currently using the DateTime Now to write a time stamp into the file name so that each message has a unique name (i.e. doesn't get overwritten by the next)

However some messages are getting overwritten by the next message since the time did not yet have a chance to advance to change the file name time stamp. (machine is very fast and messages are coming in quickly)

For each message the program resets and so I cannot use a counter inside the program. and I cannot change this aspect of the program.

Is there another way other than DateTime, to generate a unique number for each file that does not rely on a counter inside the program itself?

Thanks for any help

[Aimee Bailey]

DateTime has a more accurate measurement called .Ticks. This may not be the perfect answer, but it'll give you a more accurate timestamp.

Aimee.

[GaryTexmo]

If it helps, there are 10 000 ticks in a millisecond.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ime.ticks.aspx

[Christian Binder]

If all your files are in the same folder, you can check all the filenames of the files in this folder and create a filename, which wasn't used before.

Or you use DateTime.Now.Ticks as suggested.

Or you can use Guid.NewGuid() which creates a globally unique identifier who can be used for creating a filename.
(But this would cause unsorted filenames.

You could also use a file where you are storing a counter and take this for the filename.

[erotavlas]

Hey everyone, thanks for the suggestions. In the end I stuck with the milliseconds in the time stamp, but just added the NewGuid value as Christian suggested since all I cared about was preventing the files from getting overwritten, the file name itself wasn't too much of an issue.