Stop running the code after 15 seconds

Question

I'm trying to write something to stop running the code after 15 seconds of running.

I don't want While loop or any kind of loop to be used and would like to use IF-ELSE conditions instead as it would make it easier for me in my code.

The part of code I want to stop being executed after 15 seconds is a FOR loop itself. Let's consider the below code for example:

for (int i = 1; i < 100000; i++)
{
    Console.WriteLine("This is test no. "+ i+ "\n");
}

How would you stop this loop after 15 seconds of running?

Answer 1

You can assign DateTime variable before the loop having the current date and time, then in each loop iteration simply check if 15 seconds have passed:

DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
for (int i = 1; i < 100000; i++)
{
    if ((DateTime.Now - start).TotalSeconds >= 15)
        break;
    Console.WriteLine("This is test no. "+ i+ "\n");
}

Update: while the above will usually work, it's not bullet proof and might fail on some edge cases (as Servy pointed out in a comment), causing endless loop. Better practice would be using the Stopwatch class, which is part of System.Diagnostics namespace:

Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();
watch.Start();
for (int i = 1; i < 100000; i++)
{
    if (watch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds >= 500)
        break;
    Console.WriteLine("This is test no. " + i + "\n");
}
watch.Stop();

Answer 2

I'm posting my answer from my older post because it's more relevant here,

I think you need to measure time and stop the code after particular time say "15 seconds" ,StopWatch class can help you out.

// Create new stopwatch instance
Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
// start stopwatch
stopwatch.Start();
// Stop the stopwatch
stopwatch.Stop();
// Write result
Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed: {0}",stopwatch.Elapsed);
// you can check for Elapsed property when its greater than 15 seconds 
//then stop the code

Elapsed property returns TimeSpan instance you would do something like this.

TimeSpan timeGone = stopwatch.Elapsed;

To fit your scenario you can do something like this

Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
TimeSpan timeGone;
// Use TimeSpan constructor to specify:
// ... Days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds.
// ... The TimeSpan returned has those values.
TimeSpan RequiredTimeLine = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 15, 0);//set to 15 sec

While ( timeGone.Seconds < RequiredTimeLine.Seconds )
{
    stopwatch.Start();
    Start();
    timeGone = stopwatch.Elapsed;
}
Stop();//your method which will stop listening

Some useful links
MSDN StopWatch