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John Down
John Down

Reputation: 520

Timestamping Using Date Class Java

I am trying to use the Date class to get the current time each time my loop executes. So far I have:

Date timeNow = new Date();

while(true){

System.out.println(timeNow.getTime()); //prints current time

    Thread.sleep(10000);//sleep 10 secounds

}

When the time is reprinted it just shows the same time every print instead of being 10 seconds later. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for the help.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 55

Answers (2)

Matt
Matt

Reputation: 3760

When you execute Date myDate = new Date() you create a Date object with the current system time.

Anytime you call myDate.getTime() you will get the same output, the time as at whenever you created the object.

To see a different time, you would need to create a new Date object after each Thread.sleep(10000), like this:

while(true) {
    Date myDate = new Date()
    System.out.println(myDate.getTime()); //prints current time
    Thread.sleep(10000);//sleep 10 seconds
}

Upvotes: 0

slipperyseal
slipperyseal

Reputation: 2778

You created timeNow outside of the while loop. The time for this object is captured at construction time. When you move it within the scope of the while loop, you'll get a new object every time which represents the time it was created.

  while(true) {
    Date timeNow = new Date();
    System.out.println(timeNow.getTime()); //prints current time
    Thread.sleep(10000);//sleep 10 secounds
  }

Note that the default constructor of Date is equivalent to..

Date timeNow = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis());

Upvotes: 2

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