What is the best way to divide two TimeSpan objects?

Question

I want to get the ratio of one TimeSpan against another TimeSpan (Basically the progress of a playing video from it's total time). My current methods is to get the milliseconds of the two TimeSpan objects and divide one against the other. Something like:

        int durationInMilliseconds = totalTimeSpan.Milliseconds;
        int progressInMilliseconds = progressTimeSpan.Milliseconds;

        Double progressRatio = progressInMilliseconds / durationInMilliseconds;

Is there a more direct route? It's a simple problem and i'm just curious if there is a super elegant way to solve it.

Cheers all James

Answer 1

double progressRatio = progressTimeSpan.Ticks / (double)totalTimeSpan.Ticks;

You must cast one to a double, otherwise C# will do integer division. Ticks is better than the TotalMilliseconds because that is how it is stored and avoids any conversion.

Answer 2

You should use either Ticks or TotalMilliseconds , depending on the required precision. Milliseconds is the number of milliseconds past the current second.

As for a better solution, it doesn't get simpler than a division so your current solution is fine (minus the bug).

Answer 3

TimeSpan gained several new operators with the release of .NET Core 2.0 :

public TimeSpan Divide(double divisor);
public double Divide(TimeSpan ts);
public TimeSpan Multiply(double factor);

public static TimeSpan operator /(TimeSpan timeSpan, double divisor);
public static double operator /(TimeSpan t1, TimeSpan t2);
public static TimeSpan operator *(double factor, TimeSpan timeSpan);
public static TimeSpan operator *(TimeSpan timeSpan, double factor);

Of note, a TimeSpan can now be divided by another TimeSpan :

var a = new TimeSpan(10, 0, 0);
var b = new TimeSpan(0, 30, 0);
var c = new TimeSpan(0, 4, 30);

Console.WriteLine(a / b);
// Displays: "20"

Console.WriteLine(b / c);
// Displays: "6.66666666666667"

Answer 4

Make use of extension method can make codes more readable.

public static double DividedBy(this TimeSpan x, TimeSpan y)
{
    return Convert.ToDouble(x.Ticks) / y.Ticks;
}