System.currentTimeMillis() not respecting system clock

Question

How does System.currentTimeMillis() work? I thought it checked the system clock. But I have an application that monitors the clock and I try to catch changes in it (for instance if the user changes his/her clock during runtime). But the System.currentTimeMillis() seems to ignore the time changes of the sytem clock. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I had already done that. That is why I posted. I
could have sworn it worked from previous experience,
but I am not seeing it work now...The following code:import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class TimeDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
            System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis());
            br.readLine();
            System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis());
        catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println(e);
}Produces the following output:
$ java TimeDemo
1120149951371
1117644363468 You'll note that time appears to have gone backwards - but in fact I set the clock back during the readLine block. So I think it does respond to changing the clock (at least under Solaris on a SPARC with Java 1.5).