Wrapping StopWatch timing with a delegate or lambda?

Jeff Atwood picture Jeff Atwood · Oct 24, 2008 · Viewed 17.4k times · Source

I'm writing code like this, doing a little quick and dirty timing:

var sw = new Stopwatch();
sw.Start();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
    b = DoStuff(s);
}
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);

Surely there's a way to call this bit of timing code as a fancy-schmancy .NET 3.0 lambda rather than (God forbid) cutting and pasting it a few times and replacing the DoStuff(s) with DoSomethingElse(s)?

I know it can be done as a Delegate but I'm wondering about the lambda way.

Answer

Matt Hamilton picture Matt Hamilton · Oct 24, 2008

How about extending the Stopwatch class?

public static class StopwatchExtensions
{
    public static long Time(this Stopwatch sw, Action action, int iterations)
    {
        sw.Reset();
        sw.Start(); 
        for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
        {
            action();
        }
        sw.Stop();

        return sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
    }
}

Then call it like this:

var s = new Stopwatch();
Console.WriteLine(s.Time(() => DoStuff(), 1000));

You could add another overload which omits the "iterations" parameter and calls this version with some default value (like 1000).