From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2006-07-30T03:55:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Loop Timing and Constant Input

Picklegnome wrote:
> A few quick questions:
>
> How can I make a loop that runs at, say, 8Hz? That is, every 1/8 of a
> second, it executes the loop. I could put a pause at the end of the loop
> (what is the syntax for making the script wait a certain amount of time
> before continuing?) but this is rather imprecise - I want the loop to take
> 1/8 of a second, including all processing time.

span = 1.0 / 8

99.times {
  start_time = Time.now
  print "."
  sleep span - (Time.now - start_time)
}

>
> Secondly, how can I get input from the keyboard without the user pressing
> enter?

"What should I feed my pet?"  The answer would depend upon what
kind of pet you have.

"What sort of glue should I use to repair my broken chess piece?"
That may depend upon the material of which the piece is made.

For windoze:

require 'Win32API'
Kbhit = Win32API.new("msvcrt", "_kbhit", [], 'I')
Getch = Win32API.new("msvcrt", "_getch", [], 'I')
def get_key
  sleep 0.02
  return nil   if Kbhit.call.zero?
  c = Getch.call
  c = Getch.call + 256   if c.zero? || c == 0xE0
  c
end