I have the following code for a kind of 'stopwatch' that extends the Thread class:
package StopWatch;
//Code taken from:
//https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9526041/how-to-program-for-a-stopwatch
public class Stopwatch extends Thread {
private long startTime;
private boolean started;
public void startTimer() {
this.startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
this.started = true;
this.start();
}
public void run() {
while(started){/*currentTimeMillis increases on its own */}
System.out.println("timer stopped");
}
public int[] getTime() {
long milliTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - this.startTime;
int[] time = new int[]{0,0,0,0};
time[0] = (int)(milliTime / 3600000); //gives number of hours elapsed
time[1] = (int)(milliTime / 60000) % 60; //gives number of remaining minutes elapsed
time[2] = (int)(milliTime / 1000) % 60; //gives number of remaining seconds elapsed
time[3] = (int)(milliTime); //gives number of remaining milliseconds elapsed
return time;
}
public void stopTimer() {
this.started = false;
}
}
and I'm testing it in the following driver class:
import StopWatch.Stopwatch;
public class StopWatchTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
stopwatch.startTimer();
int sum = 0;
for (long i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
sum++;
}
int[] time = stopwatch.getTime();
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
if (i < 3) {
System.out.print(time[i]+":");
} else {
System.out.print(time[i]);
}
}
stopwatch.stopTimer();
}
}
My intent is to use instances of class Stopwatch to measure the performance of various blocks of code (The for-loop in the driver class for instance) by having these Stopwatch objects in a main thread start a timer in separate thread before executing the blocks of code I want to evaluate, then have them (the Stopwatch objects) stop their timer once execution of said blocks in the main thread have finished. I understand that there are much simpler and easier ways to do this but I wanted to try doing it this way as sort of a "proof of concept" and to simply get better with multi-threading, but I'm encountering some problems:
1) When I run the driver class StopWatchTest I get seemingly random and arbitrary output each time (but mostly 0:0:0:0)
2) The main thread (or possibly the Stopwatch thread, I'm not even sure anymore) seems to never stop executing after I get outputs like 0:0:0:0
3) When I try debugging with breakpoints and the like I get completely unexpected behavior depending on where I put the breakpoints (The main thread does sometime finish execution but with random outputs like 0:0:13:2112 and other times I just get stuck in the Stopwatch thread)
Point 3 doesn't concern me as much as 1 and 2 as I have limited knowledge of how multi-threading behaves when one or several of the threads are paused at breakpoints for debugging (I suspect that when I break in the main thread the Stopwatch thread continues running). Points 1 and 2 bother me much more as I cannot see why they would be occurring.
