Question about the While loop idle

[MattH]

Just curious. Why is it suggested to use

While 1

Sleep(1000) ; Idle around

WEnd

instead of

Sleep(2147483647)

for event driven scripts?

The memory used by the loop is about three times than that of just sleep. Is there another drawback to using sleep other than the program will terminate in 24 days (at the max value)?

Thanks for your help.

[martin]

Just curious. Why is it suggested to use

While 1

Sleep(1000) ; Idle around

WEnd

instead of

Sleep(2147483647)

for event driven scripts?

The memory used by the loop is about three times than that of just sleep. Is there another drawback to using sleep other than the program will terminate in 24 days (at the max value)?

Thanks for your help.

In general people want a script to run untill requested to close, so a fixed sleep just to save a few bytes of memory would not be a great idea.

[enaiman]

Also you might consider the fact that during a Sleep - the script does nothing - it will be practically "frozen" for the amount of time specified - you can't even close it during sleep time.

Hope it is a reason good enough

Test this and you'll see the point in what I said:

#include <GUIConstants.au3>

$Form1 = GUICreate("AForm1", 468, 128, 193, 115)
$Button1 = GUICtrlCreateButton("AButton1", 104, 40, 273, 41, 0)
GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)

While 1
    $nMsg = GUIGetMsg()
    Switch $nMsg
        Case $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE
            Exit
        Case $Button1
            Sleep(20000)
    EndSwitch
WEnd

[martin]

Also you might consider the fact that during a Sleep - the script does nothing - it will be practically "frozen" for the amount of time specified - you can't even close it during sleep time.

Hope it is a reason good enough

Test this and you'll see the point in what I said:

#include <GUIConstants.au3>

$Form1 = GUICreate("AForm1", 468, 128, 193, 115)
$Button1 = GUICtrlCreateButton("AButton1", 104, 40, 273, 41, 0)
GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)

While 1
    $nMsg = GUIGetMsg()
    Switch $nMsg
        Case $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE
            Exit
        Case $Button1
            Sleep(20000)
    EndSwitch
WEnd

But MattH did say he was talking about onevent mode, so if you put a long sleep inside the while loop, or just had a sleep as MattH suggested then you would still get a respone to events.

[Richard Robertson]

The script still wouldn't close though, I think. Not if it was sleeping.

[enaiman]

Ooops :"> my bad.

You're right.

[crash748]

But this way, you don't need tight while loop...

#include <GUIConstants.au3>
Opt("GUIOnEventMode", 1)

$Form1 = GUICreate("AForm1", 468, 128, 193, 115)
GUISetOnEvent($GUI_EVENT_CLOSE, "CLOSE")
GUICtrlCreateButton("AButton1", 104, 40, 273, 41, 0)
GUICtrlSetOnEvent(-1, "button1")
GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)

While 1
    Sleep(2147483647)
WEnd

Func button1()
    MsgBox(0, "AForm1", "Ouch! You press the button")
EndFunc   ;==>button1

Func CLOSE()
    Exit
EndFunc   ;==>CLOSE

[martin]

The script still wouldn't close though, I think. Not if it was sleeping.

You should test it to see if what you think is correct.

enaiman might like to know the result.

Edited September 14, 2007 by martin

[therks]

HotKeySet('{esc}', '_exit')

Sleep(0x7fffffff) ; Equivalent to 2147483647 but easier to remember :P

Func _exit()
    MsgBox(0,'Bye','Exit right now!')
    exit
EndFunc

*Edit: Whoa, emoticons work inside [autoit] tags? That's not cool...

Edited September 15, 2007 by Saunders

[enaiman]

HotKeys will always work when the script is put to sleep

And about the Sleep inside the While loop I have to say that I'm a bit confused myself. My idea about the main loop was that the loop is executed over and over (and this is the behaviour of a While loop) when the control is passed back to it - script is idling. So it looks logical to me that once in the While loop the script should execute the instructions between.

if the example is:

#include <GUIConstants.au3>
AutoItSetOption ("TrayIconDebug", 1)
Opt("GUIOnEventMode", 1)
$Form1 = GUICreate("AForm1", 327, 70, 193, 115)
GUISetOnEvent($GUI_EVENT_CLOSE, "AForm1Close")
$i=1
$Label1 = GUICtrlCreateLabel($i, 152, 16, 20, 17)
GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)

While 1
    Sleep(1000)
    $i +=1
    GUICtrlSetData($Label1, $i)
WEnd
        
Func AForm1Close()
    Exit
EndFunc

You can see that indeed the instructions are executed over and over and if you put a very long sleep then the other actions inside the while loop are delayed accordingly = this is the reason for using small Sleep times. Indeed the scipt answers to events if you put a long sleep between but you won't be able to do something inside the while loop. This way (small sleep) I consider to be more "appropriate" for learning and also a good practice (something like eliminating "go to" command).

And to tease a little ... change the Sleep inside my loop to 2147483647 and let me know when it will change to next value ... I could wait 25 days for that

... just a little joke

Edited September 18, 2007 by enaiman

[dpaynebrown]

While 1
    Sleep(2147483647)
WEnd

If your OnEvent is going to be idle for that long, why even use a loop?