What is TimeUnit.toMicros() in Java?

TimeUnit is an enumshort for enumeration that deals with different units of time and its operations.

It has different units of time such as:

  • NANOSECONDS
  • MICROSECONDS
  • MILLISECONDS
  • SECONDS
  • MINUTES
  • HOURS
  • DAYS

The toMicros() method of the TimeUnit converts the time represented by the TimeUnit object to microseconds since midnight UTC on January 1, 1970.

How to import the TimeUnit enum

The TimeUnit enum is defined in the java.util.concurrent package. Use the import statement below to import the TimeUnit enum.


import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

Syntax


public long toMicros(long duration)

Parameters

  • long duration: the duration to be converted to nanoseconds.

The duration parameter value relies on the unit of time chosen for the time unit object.

Return value

The method returns the converted duration to nanoseconds.

  • It returns Long.MIN_VALUE if the conversion overflows negatively.
  • It returns Long.MAX_VALUE if it overflows positively.

Code

In the code below, we get the current time in milliseconds using the Calendar class.

Next, we create a TimeUnit object with the help of MILLISECONDS, a time unit that represents one-thousandth of a second.

We pass the current time in milliseconds to the TimeUnit object’s toMicros method to get the time in microseconds.

import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
long currentTimeMilliseconds = calendar.getTimeInMillis();
TimeUnit time = TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS;
System.out.println("The time " + currentTimeMilliseconds + " milliSeconds in Microseconds = " + time.toMicros(currentTimeMilliseconds));
}
}

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