Sleep while other code is executing

[Alan502]

Hey everybody, I'm new to AutoIt and it's a very impressive scripting language. I've seen great stuff around made with it.

What I'm trying to do is that, when the script starts, a certain instruction will wait 10 minutes to execute while the rest of the code will continue as normal. I think they call it multi-threading but I'm not very good in the subject.

Thanks in advance.

[SadBunny]

Are you explicitly looking to multiple threads? Because you can easily do this kind of thing from one script, by using _DateDiff() to compare timestamps and just do some code when the time difference is greater than 10 minutes between now and the last time a timestamp was created. Coincidentally I wrote an example script yesterday for another thread which demonstrated my take on that. Don't know if it helps but it can never hurt to post a working example

#include 

$initialDateTimeStamp = _NowCalc()
$lastDateTimeStamp = _NowCalc()
$currentDateTimeStamp = _NowCalc()

$intervalInSeconds = 5

ConsoleWrite("Initial date/time stamp: " & $initialDateTimeStamp & @CRLF)

While 1
    $currentDateTimeStamp = _NowCalc()
    If _DateDiff('s', $lastDateTimeStamp, $currentDateTimeStamp) >= $intervalInSeconds Then
        ConsoleWrite("Another " & $intervalInSeconds & " seconds have passed!" & @CRLF)
        ConsoleWrite("Difference with last time stamp: " & _DateDiff('s', $lastDateTimeStamp, $currentDateTimeStamp) & @CRLF)
        ConsoleWrite("Difference with initial time stamp: " & _DateDiff('s', $initialDateTimeStamp, $currentDateTimeStamp) & @CRLF)
        ConsoleWrite("Current date/time: " & $currentDateTimeStamp & @CRLF)
        $lastDateTimeStamp = $currentDateTimeStamp
    EndIf
    Sleep(100)
WEnd

[Alan502]

Thanks SadBunny, I think DateDiff is just what I need , I also found TimeInit() and TimeDiff() which I think are the functions i'll use.

AdlibRegister sounds interesting though, is the function executed while the program is still running or does it pause the program anyways?

Edit: I checked the help twice and it says that Adlib does pause the main script. Which one should I use then? Does Adlib use less resources?

Edited November 21, 2010 by Alan502

[martin]

Thanks SadBunny, I think DateDiff is just what I need , I also found TimeInit() and TimeDiff() which I think are the functions i'll use.

AdlibRegister sounds interesting though, is the function executed while the program is still running or does it pause the program anyways?

Edit: I checked the help twice and it says that Adlib does pause the main script. Which one should I use then? Does Adlib use less resources?

It really depends on what you need to happen. Making the script continue and having a certain function start after a delay of a few minutes is ok, but if you then want the certain function to be executing at the same time as the rest of the script executes then you can't do that with one script in AutoIt. If the certain function finishes quickly then the rest of the script can continue when it's finished then AdLIbRegister would do fine. Otherwise you could still use AbLibRegister but replace the certain function with a call to run another exe or script which can then run at the same time. If the two need to swap information then you could use messages.

[James]

Otherwise you could still use AbLibRegister but replace the certain function with a call to run another exe or script which can then run at the same time. If the two need to swap information then you could use messages.

You could probably keep all the code in the same place if it requires using information your code computes.

Use $CMDLine arguments to determine if your program is re-opening again.