Thread: Timer digit

Hi, I have a problem where I want to get rid of the last digit a timer displays, which I'm not sure why it's displaying. As you can see from the runnable code below, it's adding on another random digit at the end of the time and I'm not sure why. How could I get rid of this last digit?

import java.awt.Container;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
 
import javax.swing.AbstractButton;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.SpringLayout;
 
import layout.NameOfClass;
 
public class NameOfClass extends JPanel implements ActionListener{
	protected static JButton b1;
	static JTextField textField2;
    static JFrame frame = new JFrame("Frame");
	//Start timer setup:
	public static long startTime = 0;
    public static long stopTime = 0;
    public static boolean running = false;
    public void start() {
        this.startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        this.running = true;
    }
    public void stop() {
        this.stopTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        this.running = false;
    }
    public long getElapsedTime() {
        long elapsed;
        if (running) {
             elapsed = (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime);
        }
        else {
            elapsed = (stopTime - startTime);
        }
        return elapsed;
    }
 
    public long getElapsedTimeSecs() {
        long elapsed;
        if (running) {
            elapsed = ((System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime) / 1000);
        }
        else {
            elapsed = ((stopTime - startTime) / 1000);
        }
        return elapsed;
    }
    //End timer setup
	public static void main (String args[])
	{
		javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                createAndShowGame();
            }
        });
	}
	public static void createAndShowGame() {
		textField2 = new JTextField("00:00:000");
	    textField2.setEditable(false);
	    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
	    Container contentPane = frame.getContentPane();
	    SpringLayout layout = new SpringLayout();
	    contentPane.setLayout(layout);
	    b1 = new JButton("Start");
	    b1.setVerticalTextPosition(AbstractButton.CENTER);
	    b1.setHorizontalTextPosition(AbstractButton.LEADING);
	    b1.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_S);
        try {
			b1.addActionListener(new NameOfClass());
		} catch (Exception e) {}
		contentPane.add(textField2);
		contentPane.add(b1);
	    //SET HEIGHT/WIDTH
	       layout.putConstraint(SpringLayout.WEST, textField2,
	                            10,
	                            SpringLayout.WEST, contentPane);
	       layout.putConstraint(SpringLayout.NORTH, textField2,
	                            242,
	                            SpringLayout.NORTH, contentPane);
	    //END SET HEIGHT/WIDTH
	    //SET HEIGHT/WIDTH
	       layout.putConstraint(SpringLayout.WEST, b1,
	                            197,
	                            SpringLayout.WEST, contentPane);
	       layout.putConstraint(SpringLayout.NORTH, b1,
	                            262,
	                            SpringLayout.NORTH, contentPane);
	    //END SET HEIGHT/WIDTH
	    frame.pack();
	    frame.setSize(458, 325);
	    frame.setVisible(true);
	}
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
		try{
			final NameOfClass s = new NameOfClass();
			final SimpleDateFormat TIME = new SimpleDateFormat("mm:ss:SS");
			javax.swing.Timer t = new javax.swing.Timer(10, new ActionListener() {
		        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
				    textField2.setText(TIME.format(new Date(s.getElapsedTime())));
		        }
		     });
			if(e.getSource()==b1)
			{
			    s.start();
			    t.start();
			}
		}catch(Exception e1){}
	}
 
}

Also, were you aware that there was a Timer class for Swing in java already?

Timer (Java Platform SE 6)

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

How do you expect milliseconds to be represented in just two spaces? How would you expect 1.987 seconds to look? Are you simply trying to drop the last digit, or do you expect something else to happen?

With SimpleDateFormat, you can specify the minimum number of spaces to, not the maximum. So if your format was "mm:s", and you were at 0 minutes and 12 seconds, it's not going to drop the 2. Try it out.

What the formatter is for, mostly, is padding and arranging of digits- so you can decide to put the seconds first, or the hours last, or whatever. Or you can choose to pad them all out to 5 digits- something like "mmmmm:sssss:SSSSS: would pad smaller numbers with zeroes, so 1 minute, 45 seconds, 523 ms would look like 00001:00045:00523.

But, I don't think there's a way to specify a "maximum" number of digits, which I think is what you're trying to do, because there's no standard way to drop the digits- do you drop the first digit, the last digit, do you abbreviate somehow? So Java leaves that up to you.

Actually, upon re-reading your post, are you simply not aware that you're displaying the milliseconds at all?

Yes, I am aware I'm displaying the milliseconds and yes what I'm trying to do is "set the maximum" number of digits shown. Okay, so you told me why SimpleDateFormat isn't going to work for this. But what I want to know is what should I do so that it "drops the last digit" (or maybe round up, wouldn't that solve it?), if that's at all possible.