PowerShell show elapsed time - powershell

Question

I have a script that kicks off an event and waits for the user to press any key to stop the script execution. I was trying to find a way to show a timer (how long the script has been running) while waiting for user input at Read-Host. Is there a way to accomplish this?
This works
$Time = [System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
while ($true) {
$CurrentTime = $Time.Elapsed
write-host $([string]::Format("`rTime: {0:d2}:{1:d2}:{2:d2}",
$CurrentTime.hours,
$CurrentTime.minutes,
$CurrentTime.seconds)) -nonewline
sleep 1
if ($Host.UI.RawUI.KeyAvailable -and ("q" -eq $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("IncludeKeyUp,NoEcho").Character)) {
Write-Host "Exiting now"
break;
}
}

Answer 1

This gave me the output I was after :)
$StartTime = $(get-date)
$elapsedTime = $(get-date) - $StartTime
$totalTime = "{0:HH:mm:ss}" -f ([datetime]$elapsedTime.Ticks)

Answer 2

From the article Measuring Elapsed Time in Powershell (archived copy):
Assuming that the variable $script:StartTime was set at the
beginning of your script, elapsed time can be determined using either
of the following methods:
$elapsedTime = new-timespan $script:StartTime $(get-date)
or
$elapsedTime = $(get-date) - $script:StartTime
Both methods work exactly the same and produce a System.TimeSpan object.
So, using the above example, you could set $script:StartTime before Read-Host and then call
$elapsedTime = $(get-date) - $script:StartTime after.

Answer 3

Using a timer class (RIP poshtips) gave me something like this:
$Time = [System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
while ($NoEvent) {
$CurrentTime = $Time.Elapsed
write-host $([string]::Format("`rTime: {0:d2}:{1:d2}:{2:d2}",
$CurrentTime.hours,
$CurrentTime.minutes,
$CurrentTime.seconds)) -nonewline
sleep 1
#Handle event
if(event){$NoEvent = false}
}
Where $NoEvent is your event/boolean (key press func, etc.).

Answer 4

I'm happy with this little function expanded on from Xelco52's answer
$startTime = $(get-date)
write-host "Elapsed:00:00:00"
$NoEvent = $true
While ($NoEvent)
{
Start-Sleep 1
$elapsedTime = new-timespan $startTime $(get-date)
write-host "Elapsed:$($elapsedTime.ToString("hh\:mm\:ss"))"
#Handle event
if(event){$NoEvent = $false}
}

Answer 5

TLDR answer
$StartTime = $(get-date)
#...do something...
$elapsedTime = $(get-date) - $StartTime
Most of the times $elapsedTime.TotalSeconds or $elapsedTime.TotalMilliseconds is what you want.