Sleep function delay timer

[jp123]

Documentation says the sleep function delay value is in milliseconds, but in this case it appears to be more like centiseconds. This code displays the message box after a little more than 5 seconds, instead of .5 seconds. When I change 500 to 700, it takes a little over 7 seconds.

$Count = 0

While $Count < 500

$Count += 1

Sleep(1)

WEnd

MsgBox(0, "", $Count & " loops")

What am I missing?

[Melba23]

jp123,

Welcome to the AutoIt forum.

For reasons to do with the internals of the Windows API, any Sleep value of less that 10 is treated as if it were about 10-12 ms. If you want really short Sleeps then this thread might be of use to you.

Just for completeness, Sleep(0) is a special case which just misses the next timeslice for the process - which can be anything from instantaneous to a few ms.

M23

[BrewManNH]

The minimum sleep value is 10 ms.

Undocumented but true.

[jp123]

All makes sense now. I don't actually need the 1ms sleep, 100ms should work. I'm looking for the results from "$PingTime = Ping("www.google.com",5000)" in order to spend a limited amount of time determining if there's an internet connection when the script first runs. Checking that every tenth of a second seems reasonable. The script downloads a few images from the web - the GUI is unresponsive until it's done downloading (or times out), and I don't want the user to think the program is frozen if they don't have an internet connection, so I have to check that first an not try to download any images if it's not even possible.

Thanks for the tip!

[czardas]

Why not allow the user to cancel whatever the program is doing. Instead of making the whole GUI unresponsive have a cancel button.

[jp123]

Seems I don't quote understand how this works - I didn't intend to "make" the GUI unresponsive, I was under the impression that AutoIT had to wait for the image to download (or timeout trying) before moving on to the next step.

The way it is now, if there were a "Cancel" button, the user couldn't click it until the image were done downloading (or timed out trying)... I thought AutoIt had to do one thing at a time - are you saying I can have it try to download the image and allow user interaction simultaneously?

[czardas]

I have never tried, but I imagine it should be possible. I don't know how you are downloading the files. You certainly can stop the ping easily enough by testing after every sleep of 100 ms. This is an excellent tutorial: Interrupting a Running Function

Perhaps I'm wrong about interrupting a download. It would be easier if we could see more code. Use the AutoIt code tags. Don't paste into the popup window: add the tags to the post and then paste your code between the code tags.

Edited June 13, 2012 by czardas

[AdmiralAlkex]

The way it is now, if there were a "Cancel" button, the user couldn't click it until the image were done downloading (or timed out trying)... I thought AutoIt had to do one thing at a time - are you saying I can have it try to download the image and allow user interaction simultaneously?

You can do whatever you want with a little bit of imagination and a sledgehammer

Background downloading is easy. If you are using InetGet() see the background parameter. If you use something else, tell us so we can suggest something based on that.

[jp123]

I've tried this from several different angles using examples from other posts & suggestions above, still no luck. What I really need to accomplish is to reliably determine whether or not the client running the script has an active internet connection, within 3 seconds of when the script runs. Ping function takes 15 seconds to timeout, no matter what I set the timeout to. A DllCall to wininet.dll does not report the correct information - it says my internet connection is active even when the network cable is unplugged. Both InetGet() and _INetGetSource() take just as long as Ping does to come back with nothing. Trying to use a While loop containing Sleep to test a variable at a certain interval based on any of the above hasn't worked because the loop doesn't start until the methods above return their condition, which always takes more than the desired 3 seconds when there's no internet connection.

@AdmiralAlkex - background downloading apparently doesn't work in this situation because it appears that the download has to start before it can "move" to the background and let something else happen. I'm probably wrong about the specifics, but I'm not wrong that it doesn't work when my network cable is unplugged.

@czardas - Interrupting a running function doesn't work because when I put Ping (or anything else) into a function to try to interrupt it, it just freezes that function until timeout.

After everything I've seen AutoIt do so simply & efficiently, it just seems like there should be some way to get this off the ground. Test internet connection state in 3 seconds max.

Edited June 14, 2012 by jp123

[czardas]

You know what? I don't know which thread to respond to, this one or the ping timeout thread. You shouldn't start a new topic relating to the same issues when people are trying to help you in the first thread.

Connection to a router is not the same as connection to the internet. The timeout will occur after waiting for the return ping if it dosn't arrive within the alloted time. This is in case you have a particularly slow connection. Your router probably takes longer than three seconds to establish a connection: I know mine, and probably many other people's, does.. What's all this three seconds business anyway? Explain why you need such accuracy for this.

Regarding interrupting your script - I don't believe you have tried the sledgehammer approach yet. No code, so nobody has a clue what you tried or why it failed.

Edited June 14, 2012 by czardas

[Mechaflash]

I'm looking for the results from "$PingTime = Ping("www.google.com",5000)" in order to spend a limited amount of time determining if there's an internet connection when the script first runs.

Why not just look at your network adapter status?

[jp123]

@czardas:

I started the other ping timeout thread in hopes that there was another "undocumented" way to work with Ping that would point me in the right direction - like there is with Sleep (the answer that started this whole extended conversation). It's a related issue, but not the same question, and if I can firgure out the ping problem everything else is a non-issue.

I realize that connection to a router is not the same as connection to the internet, but in my case it seems that the router isn't part of the issue becuase when I test with "no internet connection", I'm physically unplugging the cable from my computer. I need the responsiveness of the GUI to be the same regardless of OS or network condition.

"The timeout will occur after waiting for the return ping if it dosn't arrive within the alloted time." - The alloted time is what I'm trying to control. No matter what I specify for the ping timeout, it takes my machine 15 seconds for ping to return 0, and we're getting into the topic of the other thread, so I'm just commenting on your comment here

Three seconds is a specification from the client. They don't want the user to have to wait for more than three seconds to interact with the GUI.

I'm not at my dev machine right now, will post some code later - in a new thread.

Edited June 14, 2012 by jp123

[czardas]

Okay, I say you can keep the GUI responsive, but the best method will depend on your code. I wouldn't start another thread. Carry on in one of the two you already started.

[jp123]

Why not just look at your network adapter status?

Thanks for the suggestion - some of the clients running this script may be connected to a LAN but not the internet, so the network adapter status might be OK.

I tried _WinAPI_IsInternetConnected with WinAPIEx_3.7_3380, and even with the network cable unplugged is reported back that everything was OK, not sure why.

And to top it all off, many of the clients will be running XP, even some still on Windows 2000, so even if _WinAPI_IsInternetConnected worked I couldn't use it (says it requires Vista or later).

[jp123]