PowerShell How-To

Using a Stopwatch In PowerShell

Monitoring the speed at which code is executed will give a window into avenues to improve it for efficiency.

• By Adam Bertram
• 10/19/2017

Ever wonder how long a piece of PowerShell code takes to execute? Maybe you've got a script that occasionally gets hung up on some process, and you'd like a way to terminate the script if it takes too long. If so, you're going to love the System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch .NET class available in PowerShell. Using a Stopwatch object allows you to precisely measure a start and stop time which opens up all kinds of opportunities in a PowerShell script.

To use the Stopwatch object, let's first create an object using a static method called StartNew().

$stopwatch =  [system.diagnostics.stopwatch]::StartNew()

Once the object has been created, it is continually running in the background. Every time the value of $stopwatch is checked, you'll see a different time down to the microsecond level.

PS C:\> $stopwatch =  [system.diagnostics.stopwatch]::StartNew()

  PS C:\> $stopwatch

  

  IsRunning Elapsed          ElapsedMilliseconds ElapsedTicks

  --------- -------          ------------------- ------------

  True  00:00:02.2956772                2299     22990551

  

  

  PS C:\> $stopwatch

  

  IsRunning Elapsed          ElapsedMilliseconds ElapsedTicks

  --------- -------          ------------------- ------------

  True  00:00:04.0694321                4069     40694669

  

  

  PS C:\> $stopwatch

  

  IsRunning Elapsed          ElapsedMilliseconds ElapsedTicks

  --------- -------          ------------------- ------------

  True  00:00:05.1999316                5199     51999528

  We can also use the Elapsed  property to see all of the time metrics easier.

  PS C:\> $stopwatch.Elapsed

  

  

  Days               : 0

  Hours              : 0

  Minutes            : 1

  Seconds            : 23

  Milliseconds       : 795

  Ticks              : 837958187

  TotalDays          : 0.000969859012731481

  TotalHours         : 0.0232766163055556

  TotalMinutes       : 1.39659697833333

  TotalSeconds       : 83.7958187

  TotalMilliseconds : 83795.8187

We can check to see if the stopwatch is running or not by using the IsRunning property and finally stop the stopwatch by using the Stop() method.

PS C:\> $stopwatch.IsRunning

  True

  PS C:\> $stopwatch.Stop()

  PS C:\> $stopwatch.IsRunning

False

How the this method be used in a real-world situation? One great use of using the stopwatch is by creating a timeout. Let's say you've got a task that sometimes gets hung up and you want to ensure the entire script doesn't stop if this happens. We can use the stopwatch by including it in a while loop. Below is an example of checking the total seconds the stopwatch has been running and then executing some code. To prevent from attempting to execute the code every microsecond or less I've added a sleep cmdlet in there so that it will only check every second.

while ($timer.Elapsed.TotalSeconds -lt 10) {

  ## Do some stuff here

  

  ## Wait a specific interval

  Start-Sleep -Seconds 1

  

  ## Check the time

  $totalSecs =  [math]::Round($timer.Elapsed.TotalSeconds,0)

  Write-Verbose -Message "Still waiting for action  to complete after [$totalSecs] seconds..."

}

This example ensures that the code inside of the while loop does not execute for longer than ten seconds. Using a timeout is a great way to use this useful .NET object. What other applications do you see that would come in handy by using the stopwatch?