c# - Calculate Time Remaining

Question

What's a good algorithm for determining the remaining time for something to complete? I know how many total lines there are, and how many have completed already, how should I estimate the time remaining?

Answer 1

Why not?

(linesProcessed / TimeTaken) (timetaken / linesProcessed) * LinesLeft = TimeLeft

TimeLeft will then be expressed in whatever unit of time timeTaken is.

Edit:

Thanks for the comment you're right this should be:

(TimeTaken / linesProcessed) * linesLeft = timeLeft

so we have

(10 / 100) * 200 = 20 Seconds now 10 seconds go past
(20 / 100) * 200 = 40 Seconds left now 10 more seconds and we process 100 more lines
(30 / 200) * 100 = 15 Seconds and now we all see why the copy file dialog jumps from 3 hours to 30 minutes :-)