DateTime.Ticks Property
Gets the number of ticks that represent the date and time of this instance.
Namespace: System
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
Property Value
Type: System.Int64The number of ticks that represent the date and time of this instance. The value is between DateTime.MinValue.Ticks and DateTime.MaxValue.Ticks.
A single tick represents one hundred nanoseconds or one ten-millionth of a second. There are 10,000 ticks in a millisecond.
The value of this property represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since 12:00:00 midnight, January 1, 0001, which represents DateTime.MinValue. It does not include the number of ticks that are attributable to leap seconds.
The following example uses the Ticks property to display the number of ticks that have elapsed since the beginning of the twenty-first century and to instantiate a TimeSpan object. The TimeSpan object is then used to display the elapsed time using several other time intervals.
DateTime centuryBegin = new DateTime(2001, 1, 1); DateTime currentDate = DateTime.Now; long elapsedTicks = currentDate.Ticks - centuryBegin.Ticks; TimeSpan elapsedSpan = new TimeSpan(elapsedTicks); Console.WriteLine("Elapsed from the beginning of the century to {0:f}:", currentDate); Console.WriteLine(" {0:N0} nanoseconds", elapsedTicks * 100); Console.WriteLine(" {0:N0} ticks", elapsedTicks); Console.WriteLine(" {0:N2} seconds", elapsedSpan.TotalSeconds); Console.WriteLine(" {0:N2} minutes", elapsedSpan.TotalMinutes); Console.WriteLine(" {0:N0} days, {1} hours, {2} minutes, {3} seconds", elapsedSpan.Days, elapsedSpan.Hours, elapsedSpan.Minutes, elapsedSpan.Seconds); // If run on December 14, 2007, at 15:23, this example displays the // following output to the console: // Elapsed from the beginning of the century to Friday, December 14, 2007 3:23 PM: // 219,338,580,000,000,000 nanoseconds // 2,193,385,800,000,000 ticks // 219,338,580.00 seconds // 3,655,643.00 minutes // 2,538 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes, 0 seconds
Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core Role not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role supported with SP1 or later; Itanium not supported)
The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.
