From: Dennis Newbold <dennisn@...>
Date: 2002-04-17T13:21:04+09:00
Subject: alternatives to nanosleep / usleep ?

Hi All,

     I'm looking for suggestions / ideas as to how to get around a
particular problem:

     I'm basically porting some C code to a Ruby program, because I
think in the long run it will be easier to maintain and modify.  At a
couple of points in the C code, it calls nanosleep to create a brief delay
in sending commands to an external device (the host is alot faster
than the external device, and in a couple of situations, you can
send it a second command before its had time to complete the first
one).  The delay times I need are  1/8 sec. and 1/4 sec.  As far as
I can tell, Ruby doesn't provide access to any of nanosleep, usleep,
and clock, and I have no idea how long:

     i = 10
     while (i)
          i = i -1
     end

would take to run in Ruby, but for sure it will vary from one host
system to the next.  The time delays I need don't have to be too precise,
but if I wait for one second (the minimum granularity of sleep()) each
time, the entire process will take about 10 seconds as opposed to 2
seconds, which I'd like to avoid if possible, as the program will
conceivably be executed several hundred times each day.

Any help / ideas / suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks

Dennis

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