Click here to Skip to main content
15,884,980 members
Articles / Programming Languages / C#

Timer surprises, and how to avoid them

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.82/5 (72 votes)
2 Feb 2007CPOL6 min read 199.9K   3.6K   98  
A simple app demonstrates unexpected behavior of .NET timers and Thread.Sleep(); native multimedia timers come to the rescue.
<VisualStudioProject>
    <CSHARP
        ProjectType = "Local"
        ProductVersion = "7.10.3077"
        SchemaVersion = "2.0"
        ProjectGuid = "{2E16185C-64C7-4B7A-8B36-6C5C2C81EBBF}"
    >
        <Build>
            <Settings
                ApplicationIcon = "App.ico"
                AssemblyKeyContainerName = ""
                AssemblyName = "TimerTest_71"
                AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile = ""
                DefaultClientScript = "JScript"
                DefaultHTMLPageLayout = "Grid"
                DefaultTargetSchema = "IE50"
                DelaySign = "false"
                OutputType = "WinExe"
                PreBuildEvent = ""
                PostBuildEvent = ""
                RootNamespace = "TimerTest_71"
                RunPostBuildEvent = "OnBuildSuccess"
                StartupObject = ""
            >
                <Config
                    Name = "Debug"
                    AllowUnsafeBlocks = "false"
                    BaseAddress = "285212672"
                    CheckForOverflowUnderflow = "false"
                    ConfigurationOverrideFile = ""
                    DefineConstants = "DEBUG;TRACE"
                    DocumentationFile = ""
                    DebugSymbols = "true"
                    FileAlignment = "4096"
                    IncrementalBuild = "false"
                    NoStdLib = "false"
                    NoWarn = ""
                    Optimize = "false"
                    OutputPath = "bin\Debug\"
                    RegisterForComInterop = "false"
                    RemoveIntegerChecks = "false"
                    TreatWarningsAsErrors = "false"
                    WarningLevel = "4"
                />
                <Config
                    Name = "Release"
                    AllowUnsafeBlocks = "false"
                    BaseAddress = "285212672"
                    CheckForOverflowUnderflow = "false"
                    ConfigurationOverrideFile = ""
                    DefineConstants = "TRACE"
                    DocumentationFile = ""
                    DebugSymbols = "false"
                    FileAlignment = "4096"
                    IncrementalBuild = "false"
                    NoStdLib = "false"
                    NoWarn = ""
                    Optimize = "true"
                    OutputPath = "bin\Release\"
                    RegisterForComInterop = "false"
                    RemoveIntegerChecks = "false"
                    TreatWarningsAsErrors = "false"
                    WarningLevel = "4"
                />
            </Settings>
            <References>
                <Reference
                    Name = "System"
                    AssemblyName = "System"
                    HintPath = "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\System.dll"
                />
                <Reference
                    Name = "System.Data"
                    AssemblyName = "System.Data"
                    HintPath = "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\System.Data.dll"
                />
                <Reference
                    Name = "System.Drawing"
                    AssemblyName = "System.Drawing"
                    HintPath = "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\System.Drawing.dll"
                />
                <Reference
                    Name = "System.Windows.Forms"
                    AssemblyName = "System.Windows.Forms"
                    HintPath = "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\System.Windows.Forms.dll"
                />
                <Reference
                    Name = "System.XML"
                    AssemblyName = "System.Xml"
                    HintPath = "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\System.XML.dll"
                />
            </References>
        </Build>
        <Files>
            <Include>
                <File
                    RelPath = "App.ico"
                    BuildAction = "Content"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "AssemblyInfo.cs"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "FastTimerTest.cs"
                    SubType = "Code"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "Form1.cs"
                    SubType = "Form"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "Form1.resx"
                    DependentUpon = "Form1.cs"
                    BuildAction = "EmbeddedResource"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "FormTimerTest.cs"
                    SubType = "Code"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "ThreadTimerTest.cs"
                    SubType = "Code"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
                <File
                    RelPath = "TimersTimerTest.cs"
                    SubType = "Code"
                    BuildAction = "Compile"
                />
            </Include>
        </Files>
    </CSHARP>
</VisualStudioProject>

By viewing downloads associated with this article you agree to the Terms of Service and the article's licence.

If a file you wish to view isn't highlighted, and is a text file (not binary), please let us know and we'll add colourisation support for it.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer (Senior)
Belgium Belgium
I am an engineer with a background in electronics, software and mathematics.

I develop technical software, both for embedded systems and for desktop equipment. This includes operating systems, communication software, local networks, image processing, machine control, automation, etc.

I have been using all kinds of microcontrollers and microprocessors (Intel 4004/8080/8051/80386/Pentium, Motorola 680x/680x0/ColdFire/PowerPC, Microchip PIC, Altera NIOS, and many more), lots of programming languages (all relevant assemblers, Fortran, Basic, C, Java, C#, and many more), and different operating systems (both proprietary and commercial).

For desktop applications and general development tools I have been using both UNIX systems and Mac/MacOS for many years, but I have switched to x86-based PCs with Windows, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework several years ago.

I specialize in:
- cross-platform development (making software that runs on diverse hardware/OS combinations)
- instruction set simulation
- improving software performance, i.e. making sure the software runs the job at hand in as short a time as possible on the given hardware. This entails algorithm selection, implementation design, accurate measurements, code optimisation, and sometimes implementing virtual machines, applying SIMD technology (such as MMX/SSE), and more.

Comments and Discussions