DELAY statement

Purpose:

DELAY creates a timed delay, pause or wait. DELAY will provide a time resolution of 1 second.

DELAY NumSeconds AS INTEGER

Example:

DELAY 3 ' delay 3 seconds

SLEEP statement

Purpose:

SLEEP creates a timed pause with the minimum interval equivalent to a time resolution dependent on the speed of the system clock, typically, 15.625 millisecond, 64 ticks per second.

SLEEP[(Milliseconds AS INTEGER)]

Remarks:

The SLEEP procedure is a simple wrapper for the Win32 API Sleep statement. For more information, visit the Microsoft Sleep function webpage

Example 1:

SLEEP(1234) ' delay 1,234 milliseconds

Example 2:

Here is a version that is accurate to about 1 millisecond. However, it can sometimes affect other system timers resulting in stutters or flickers.

SUB BCX_SLEEP (x AS INTEGER)
  '****************************************** 
  ' Gives precision to about 1 millisecond 
  '****************************************** 
  DIM RAW tc AS TIMECAPS
  timeGetDevCaps(&tc, SIZEOF(TIMECAPS))
  timeBeginPeriod(tc.wPeriodMin)
  SLEEP(x)
  timeEndPeriod(tc.wPeriodMin)
END SUB

Example 3:

This version is good to about 100 nano-seconds but is setup to accept only milliseconds argument. It has lower impact on the system and could be extended to accept sub-millisecond arguments.

SUB BCX_SLEEP (Milliseconds AS INTEGER)
  '*************************************************** 
  ' Intervals are precise to approx 100 nano-seconds 
  ' BCX_SLEEP(0) resets this timer 
  ' Only use this when you need short, high precision 
  ' intervals (1 to  15 milliseconds) otherwise just 
  ' use BCX's normal SLEEP() command 
  '*************************************************** 
  STATIC hTimer AS HANDLE
  DIM liDueTime AS LARGE_INTEGER
  DIM success AS INT

  ' If called with 0, close and reset the timer handle 
  IF Milliseconds = 0 THEN
    IF hTimer THEN
      CloseHandle(hTimer)
      hTimer = NULL
    END IF
    EXIT SUB
  END IF

  ' Initialize timer if not already created 
  IF hTimer = NULL THEN
    hTimer = CreateWaitableTimer(NULL, TRUE, NULL)
    IF hTimer = NULL THEN EXIT SUB
  END IF

  ' Convert ms to 100ns intervals (negative = relative time) 
  liDueTime.QuadPart = -1 * Milliseconds * 10000

  success = SetWaitableTimer(hTimer, &liDueTime, 0, NULL, NULL, FALSE)
  IF success THEN
    WaitForSingleObject(hTimer, INFINITE)
  END IF
END SUB

PAUSE statement

Purpose:

PAUSE stops the running program and waits for a key to be pressed before allowing the program to continue. PAUSE is intended for use in CONSOLE mode programming.

PAUSE