Is the time indicated during copying the file expected the best time or the worst time?

Question

When copying files to Windows, we get the expected completion time. Is time the best time or the worst time? Also do you accept environment variables?

Answer 1

Raymond Chen has something to say about this ...

Answer 2

If you implement such a function, let the progress indicator grow rapidly to 90%. Then you can do the real work, no matter how long it takes. The user experience will be much better than showing current progress; -)

Answer 3

I can only guess how the time is calculated. But many hours spent looking at the copy window and seeing how the time estimate changes, here is my best estimate:

• Windows stores a list of all the files that you want to copy.
• It keeps track of the time and number of already copied files.
• The remaining time is calculated as:
  • Average file time so far = time elapsed so far / already copied files
  • Estimated time required for all files = avg time per file * number of files.

The calculation is repeated after passing a fixed period of time (maybe 5 seconds, maybe 30?)

This is probably a little more complicated than I explained above, I believe that the size of the file that is currently being copied and the percentage that has been copied are also included in the calculation. This explains why we see an estimate when only one file is copied ;-).

So, in a direct answer to your question: this is not the best and not the worst time, it is just a very weak assessment, which is more accurate, the larger the file size differs from each other.

Or, in other words: it was perhaps the fastest way (from the point of view of fast programming, as well as low processor use at startup) that a programmer might think about implementing this function. I would not be surprised if it was encoded on Friday night ...