Easiest way to make lua script wait/pause/sleep/block for a few seconds?

Question

I cant figure out how to get lua to do any common timing tricks, such as

• sleep - stop all action on thread

• pause/wait - don\'t go on to the

Answer 1

You can use:

os.execute("sleep 1") -- I think you can do every command of CMD using os.execute("command")

or you can use:

function wait(waitTime)
    timer = os.time()
    repeat until os.time() > timer + waitTime
end

wait(YourNumberHere)

Answer 2

I agree with John on wrapping the sleep function. You could also use this wrapped sleep function to implement a pause function in lua (which would simply sleep then check to see if a certain condition has changed every so often). An alternative is to use hooks.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean with your third bulletpoint (don't commands usually complete before the next is executed?) but hooks may be able to help with this also.

See: Question: How can I end a Lua thread cleanly? for an example of using hooks.

Answer 3

Sleep Function - Usage : sleep(1) -- sleeps for 1 second

local clock = os.clock
function sleep(n)  -- seconds
   local t0 = clock()
   while clock() - t0 <= n do
   end
end

Pause Function - Usage : pause() -- pause and waits for the Return key

function pause()
   io.stdin:read'*l'
end

hope, this is what you needed! :D - Joe DF

Answer 4

It doesn't get easier than this. Sleep might be implemented in your FLTK or whatever, but this covers all the best ways to do standard sort of system sleeps without special event interrupts. Behold:

-- we "pcall" (try/catch) the "ex", which had better include os.sleep
-- it may be a part of the standard library in future Lua versions (past 5.2)
local ok,ex = pcall(require,"ex")
if ok then
   -- print("Ex")
   -- we need a hack now too? ex.install(), you say? okay
   pcall(ex.install)
   -- let's try something else. why not?
   if ex.sleep and not os.sleep then os.sleep = ex.sleep end
end

if not os.sleep then
   -- we make os.sleep
   -- first by trying ffi, which is part of LuaJIT, which lets us write C code
   local ok,ffi = pcall(require,"ffi")
   if ok then
      -- print("FFI")
      -- we can use FFI
      -- let's just check one more time to make sure we still don't have os.sleep
      if not os.sleep then
         -- okay, here is our custom C sleep code:
         ffi.cdef[[
            void Sleep(int ms);
            int poll(struct pollfd *fds,unsigned long nfds,int timeout);
         ]]
         if ffi.os == "Windows" then
            os.sleep = function(sec)
               ffi.C.Sleep(sec*1000)
            end
         else
            os.sleep = function(sec)
               ffi.C.poll(nil,0,sec*1000)
            end
         end
      end
   else
      -- if we can't use FFI, we try LuaSocket, which is just called "socket"
      -- I'm 99.99999999% sure of that
      local ok,socket = pcall(require,"socket")
      -- ...but I'm not 100% sure of that
      if not ok then local ok,socket = pcall(require,"luasocket") end
      -- so if we're really using socket...
      if ok then
         -- print("Socket")
         -- we might as well confirm there still is no os.sleep
         if not os.sleep then
            -- our custom socket.select to os.sleep code:
            os.sleep = function(sec)
               socket.select(nil,nil,sec)
            end
         end
      else
         -- now we're going to test "alien"
         local ok,alien = pcall(require,"alien")
         if ok then
         -- print("Alien")
         -- beam me up...
            if not os.sleep then
               -- if we still don't have os.sleep, that is
               -- now, I don't know what the hell the following code does
               if alien.platform == "windows" then
                  kernel32 = alien.load("kernel32.dll")
                  local slep = kernel32.Sleep
                  slep:types{ret="void",abi="stdcall","uint"}
                  os.sleep = function(sec)
                     slep(sec*1000)
                  end
               else
                  local pol = alien.default.poll
                  pol:types('struct', 'unsigned long', 'int')
                  os.sleep = function(sec)
                     pol(nil,0,sec*1000)
                  end
               end
            end
         elseif package.config:match("^\\") then
            -- print("busywait")
            -- if the computer is politically opposed to NIXon, we do the busywait
            -- and shake it all about
            os.sleep = function(sec)
               local timr = os.time()
               repeat until os.time() > timr + sec
            end
         else
            -- print("NIX")
            -- or we get NIXed
            os.sleep = function(sec)
               os.execute("sleep " .. sec)
            end
         end
      end
   end
end

Answer 5

I started with Lua but, then I found that I wanted to see the results instead of just the good old command line flash. So i just added the following line to my file and hey presto, the standard:

please press any key to continue...

os.execute("PAUSE")

My example file is only a print and then a pause statment so I am sure you don't need that posted here.

I am not sure of the CPU implications of a running a process for a full script. However stopping the code mid flow in debugging could be useful.

Answer 6

Pure Lua uses only what is in ANSI standard C. Luiz Figuereido's lposix module contains much of what you need to do more systemsy things.