Execute a method every x seconds in C

Question

Is there an example of a working timer that executes some function every x amount seconds using C.

I\'d appreciate an example working code.

Answer 1

IMO, in this case, you can utilize gettimeofday() into algorithm like: use such a while(1) that counts time difference between current time and last_execution_time, everytime the difference reach 1 seconds, update the last_execution_time and call the function that supposed to run in every 1 second.

#include 
#include 

#DEFINE DESIRED_INTERVAL 1  //1 second
int get_tv_cur_minus_given(struct timeval *tv, struct timeval *tp_given, int *sign)
{
    struct timeval tp_cur;


    gettimeofday(&tp_cur,NULL);

    tv->tv_sec  = tp_cur.tv_sec - tp_given->tv_sec;
    tv->tv_usec = tp_cur.tv_usec - tp_given->tv_usec;

    if(tv->tv_sec > 0) {
        *sign = 1;
        if(tv->tv_usec < 0) {
            tv->tv_sec--;
            tv->tv_usec = 1000000 + tv->tv_usec;
        }
    }else
    if(tv->tv_sec == 0) {
        if(tv->tv_usec == 0)
            *sign = 0;
        else
        if(tv->tv_usec < 0) {
            *sign = -1;
            tv->tv_usec *= -1;
        }else
            *sign = 1;
    }else {
        *sign = -1;
        if(tv->tv_usec > 0) {
            tv->tv_sec++;
            tv->tv_usec = 1000000 - tv->tv_usec;
        }else
        if(tv->tv_usec < 0)
            tv->tv_usec *= -1;
    return 0;
        }
}

int main()
{
    struct timeval      tv_last_run;
    struct timeval  tv_diff;
    int sign;


    while(true)
    {

     get_tv_cur_minus_given(&tv_diff, &tv_last_run, &sign);

        if(tv_diff.tv_sec > DESIRED_INTERVAL)
        {
            gettimeofday(&tv_last_run,NULL);
            printf("\ncall the func here");
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

In case you need different thread out of main thread, move the lines inside main() into a function pointer and pass it through pthread_create function, eg :

void *threadproc(void *arg)
{
   while(1)
   {
       //put the same lines as inside main() function in above code snippet. .
   }
}
pthread_create(&tid, NULL, &threadproc, NULL);