{"id":5156,"date":"2014-02-28T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T14:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/?p=5156"},"modified":"2014-02-27T11:02:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T16:02:28","slug":"displaying-time-in-human-readable-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/2014\/02\/28\/displaying-time-in-human-readable-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Displaying time in human readable form"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Jiro<\/a>'s pick this week is seconds2human<\/tt><\/a> by Rody Oldenhuis<\/a>.<\/p>

There was a time when I obsessed over waitbars. Why is that? I'm not sure, but Ned has a few guesses<\/a>. But one of the features that I look for in these waitbar entries<\/a> is the ability to show the remaining time, like some of these<\/a>. I have created my own waitbar as well to include the time remaining, and I remember thinking quite a bit about how I display the time. I can easily calculate the time using tic<\/tt><\/a> and toc<\/tt><\/a>. But what's the best way to display the seconds? It's probably better to say \"3 hours 44 minutes 13 seconds remaining\" than to say \"13453 seconds remaining\". So I had to do some manipulations to have an appropriate display, and many of the entries I highlighted above do that as well.<\/p>

Rody's seconds2human<\/tt> does this nicely. You simply pass in the time in seconds, and it will convert it to something human understandable. There's an approximate display:<\/p>

seconds2human(13453)\r\n<\/pre>
ans =\r\nAbout 3 hours and 44 minutes.\r\n<\/pre>
and an accurate display:<\/p>
seconds2human(13453,'full'<\/span>)\r\n<\/pre>
ans =\r\n3 hours, 44 minutes, 13 seconds.\r\n<\/pre>
Now, I can just make use of this and not have to worry about decomposing the seconds.<\/p>
hWait = waitbar(0, 'Calculating...'<\/span>);\r\ntotal = 1000;\r\n% Start timer<\/span>\r\ntstart = tic;\r\nfor<\/span> iter = 1:total\r\n    SomeComputation(iter);\r\n    % Calculate remaining time<\/span>\r\n    remaining = toc(tstart)*(total-iter)\/iter;\r\n    % Update waitbar<\/span>\r\n    waitbar(iter\/total,hWait, ...<\/span>\r\n        ['Time remaining: '<\/span>,seconds2human(remaining)])\r\nend<\/span>\r\ndelete(hWait);\r\n<\/pre>
\"\" <\/p>
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Comments<\/b><\/p>
I also want to point out that Rody's code is very well-written. It is well-documented, has error checking, and allows for a vectorized call, i.e. you can pass an array of numbers. Give this a try and let us know what you think here<\/a> or leave a comment<\/a> for Rody.<\/p>