Counter keeps repeating please provide answer

Question

Now, I am learning C programming, I stumbled upon a countdown code on 'Codeproject.com' and decided to run it and analyse it to learn. However, the output Countdown repeats each number thousands of times before moving to the next. Please I need help understanding why this is. The code is shown below:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int main()
{
      unsigned int x_hours = 0;  
      unsigned int x_minutes = 0;
      unsigned int x_seconds = 0;
      unsigned int x_milliseconds = 0;
      unsigned int totaltime = 0, count_down_time_in_secs = 0, time_left=0;

      clock_t x_startTime, x_countTime;
      count_down_time_in_secs = 10; // 1 min is 60

      x_startTime = clock();
      time_left = count_down_time_in_secs-x_seconds;  //update timer

      while (time_left>0)
      {
        x_countTime = clock();
        x_milliseconds = x_countTime-x_startTime;
        x_seconds=(x_milliseconds/(CLOCKS_PER_SEC))-(x_hours*60);
        x_minutes=(x_milliseconds/(CLOCKS_PER_SEC))/60;
        x_hours=x_minutes/60;


        time_left = count_down_time_in_secs-x_seconds; 

        printf("\nyou have %d seconds left", time_left, count_down_time_in_secs);
      }

      printf("\n\n\nTime's out\n\n\n");

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Just add a line to print out x_milliseconds inside your loop and it will become obvious what is happening. i.e. you are executing your loop thousands of times a second.