Need something better than sleep()

I've been using sleep(1) after requesting data via a serial port because of the slight delay time in receiveing the data. However, now those 1 second delays have accumulated to too much wasted time since I really only need to wait a fraction of a second. If I was only doing one data request it wouldn't bee too bad... but I'm requesting over 5000 data chunks... 5000 seconds is a lot of time...

is there a similar function that takes values less than one second? I know of Sleep() in windows.h, but I'm running the program on a computer with only DOS 6.2. What are my options?

Thanks in advance

nanosleep(); you will probably want to build a function that uses the nanosleep/time structs internally so you can just do something like "mysleep(0,10)" where the first arg is seconds and the second one hundredths thereof, because nanosleep itself is not that simple or user friendly.

Here's the one I've been using, there are some includes that go with it that will be particular to your system, that is a mystery to me:

Code:

---

void gap (int secs, int hundredths) {
        struct timespec interval;
        interval.tv_sec=secs;
        interval.tv_nsec=hundredths*10000;
        nanosleep(&interval,NULL);
}

so, eg,
gap(0,25);

---

...actually it looks like nanosleep is POSIX, sorry.

That's similar to what I'm looking for, just I need it for dos...

Check your dos.h header file, and see if there are any sleep functions that have the resolution you are looking for.

DOS, or Windows? Most people tend to say DOS when they mean Windows Console apps, but the Native API is quite different.

--
Mats

No I actually mean DOS. Windows is not installed.

And what compiler are you using?

--
Mats

Turbo C++ 3.0

what compiler and libraries you use?

there is delay() which causes delay in milliseconds

search turboc++ help for "delay"

Just saw that is dos.h... I swear I looked through that before :/

Thanks

The answer is to use the delay() function.

#include <dos.h>


and then set your delay for what you want, in milliseconds:

delay(500); //delay will be 1/2 second.

This also works in WIndows console code, but I don't know why.

This is from Turbo C/C++ 1.01 btw, so it's 100% DOS, not windows.

how about this custom made function

Code:

---

#include <time.h>
#define MILLISEC 1000
void timewaste(clock_t lMillisec)
{
clock_t finish;
finish = clock() + (lMillisec / MILLISEC * CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
while (finish > clock())
;
}

---

you could easily extend that to any other time interval

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by creeping death

how about this custom made function

Code:

---

#include <time.h>
#define MILLISEC 1000
void timewaste(clock_t lMillisec)
{
clock_t finish;
finish = clock() + (lMillisec / MILLISEC * CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
while (finish > clock())
;
}

---

---

That is no better than the delay function that is already available in TurboC. Both have the drawback that it uses 100% of the CPU time in the machine, which is not ideal (but there's little else that can be done in DOS).

In a non-DOS environment, you should be using the OS supplied functions, as that will let the CPU do something else useful or go to sleep if there is nothing useful to do.

--
Mats

Well, I would have liked to not be using the CPU during the delay, but since I don't need the CPU to really be doing anything else during this time, then it's not that big a deal... out of curiosity, does the sleep function is dos.h use the CPU as well?