Measuring code execution time

Question

I want to know how much time a procedure/function/order takes to finish, for testing purposes.

This is what I did but my method is wrong 'cause if the difference of seconds is 0 can't return the elapsed milliseconds:

Notice the sleep value is 500 ms so elapsed seconds is 0 then it can't return milliseconds.

    Dim Execution_Start As System.DateTime = System.DateTime.Now
    Threading.Thread.Sleep(500)

    Dim Execution_End As System.DateTime = System.DateTime.Now
    MsgBox(String.Format("H:{0} M:{1} S:{2} MS:{3}", _
    DateDiff(DateInterval.Hour, Execution_Start, Execution_End), _
    DateDiff(DateInterval.Minute, Execution_Start, Execution_End), _
    DateDiff(DateInterval.Second, Execution_Start, Execution_End), _
    DateDiff(DateInterval.Second, Execution_Start, Execution_End) * 60))

Can someone show me a better way to do this? Maybe with a TimeSpan?

The solution:

Dim Execution_Start As New Stopwatch
Execution_Start.Start()

Threading.Thread.Sleep(500)

MessageBox.Show("H:" & Execution_Start.Elapsed.Hours & vbNewLine & _
       "M:" & Execution_Start.Elapsed.Minutes & vbNewLine & _
       "S:" & Execution_Start.Elapsed.Seconds & vbNewLine & _
       "MS:" & Execution_Start.Elapsed.Milliseconds & vbNewLine, _
       "Code execution time", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)

Answer 1

A better way would be to use Stopwatch, instead of DateTime differences.

Stopwatch Class - Microsoft Docs

Provides a set of methods and properties that you can use to accurately measure elapsed time.

Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew(); //creates and start the instance of Stopwatch
//your sample code
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
stopwatch.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);

Answer 2

Stopwatch measures time elapsed.

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

// Begin timing
stopwatch.Start();

Threading.Thread.Sleep(500)

// Stop timing
stopwatch.Stop();

Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed: {0}", stopwatch.Elapsed);

Here is a DEMO.

Answer 3

You can use this Stopwatch wrapper:

public class Benchmark : IDisposable 
{
    private readonly Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
    private readonly string benchmarkName;

    public Benchmark(string benchmarkName)
    {
        this.benchmarkName = benchmarkName;
        timer.Start();
    }

    public void Dispose() 
    {
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine($"{benchmarkName} {timer.Elapsed}");
    }
}

Usage:

using (var bench = new Benchmark($"Insert {n} records:"))
{
    ... your code here
}

Output:

Insert 10 records: 00:00:00.0617594

For advanced scenarios, you can use Benchmark.It or NBench

Answer 4

If you use the Stopwatch class, you can use the .StartNew() method to reset the watch to 0. So you don't have to call .Reset() followed by .Start(). Might come in handy.

Answer 5

Stopwatch is designed for this purpose and is one of the best way to measure time execution in .NET.

var watch = System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch.StartNew();
/* the code that you want to measure comes here */
watch.Stop();
var elapsedMs = watch.ElapsedMilliseconds;

Do not use DateTimes to measure time execution in .NET.

Answer 6

If you are looking for the amount of time that the associated thread has spent running code inside the application.
You can use ProcessThread.UserProcessorTime Property which you can get under System.Diagnostics namespace.

TimeSpan startTime= Process.GetCurrentProcess().Threads[i].UserProcessorTime; // i being your thread number, make it 0 for main
//Write your function here
TimeSpan duration = Process.GetCurrentProcess().Threads[i].UserProcessorTime.Subtract(startTime);

Console.WriteLine($"Time caluclated by CurrentProcess method: {duration.TotalSeconds}"); // This syntax works only with C# 6.0 and above

Note: If you are using multi threads, you can calculate the time of each thread individually and sum it up for calculating the total duration.