How can I perform a short delay in C without using sleep

Question

I m incredibly new to programming  and I ve been learning well enough so far  I think  but I still can t get a grasp around the idea of making a delay the way I want  What I m working on is a sort of test  game  thingy using a Windows forms application that involves a combat system  In it  I want to make an NPC that does an action every couple of seconds  The problem is  I also want to allow the player to interact between attacks  Thread sleep really doesn t seem to work for me not only because I don t know how to multithread  but whenever I try to run it  say  like this     textBox1 Text      r nThread Sleeps     System Threading Thread Sleep 4000    textBox1 Text      r nThread awakens      It seems to insist on sleeping first  then printing both lines    I think that s all I can say at the moment  but if that s still too vague or wordy  feel free to tell me    In short  In C  I want to make something delay before running but at the same time still allow user interaction

User · Answer

You can probably use timers   http   msdn microsoft com en-us library system timers timer aspx  Timers can provide you a precision up to 1 millisecond  Depending on the tick interval an event will be generated  Do your stuff inside the tick event

User · Answer

By adding using System Timers  to your program you can use this function   private static void delay int Time delay       int i 0        ameTir   new System Timers Timer         delayTimer   new System Timers Timer         delayTimer Interval   Time delay       delayTimer AutoReset   false    so that it only calls the method once      delayTimer Elapsed     s  args    gt  i   1       delayTimer Start        while  i    0           Delay is a function and can be used like   delay 5000

User · Answer

Sorry for awakening an old question like this   But I think what the original author wanted as an answer was   You need to force your program to make the graphic update after you make the change to the textbox1  You can do that by invoking Update     textBox1 Text      r nThread Sleeps    textBox1 Update    System Threading Thread Sleep 4000   textBox1 Text      r nThread awakens    textBox1 Update      Normally this will be done automatically when the thread is done  Ex  you press a button  changes are made to the text  thread dies  and then  Update   is fired and you see the changes   I m not an expert so I cant really tell you when its fired  but its something similar to this any way    In this case  you make a change  pause the thread  and then change the text again  and when the thread finally dies the  Update   is fired   This resulting in you only seeing the last change made to the text   You would experience the same issue if you had a long execution between the text changes

User · Answer

If you re using  NET 4 5 you can use the new async await framework to sleep without locking the thread    How it works is that you mark the function in need of asynchronous operations  with the async keyword  This is just a hint to the compiler  Then you use the await keyword on the line where you want your code to run asynchronously and your program will wait without locking the thread or the UI  The method you call  on the await line  has to be marked with an async keyword as well and is usually named ending with Async  as in ImportFilesAsync   What you need to do in your example is    Make sure your program has  Net Framework 4 5 as Target Framework Mark your function that needs to sleep with the async keyword  see example below  Add using System Threading Tasks  to your code    Your code is now ready to use the Task Delay method instead of the System Threading Thread Sleep method  it is possible to use await on Task Delay because Task Delay is marked with async in its definition    private async void button1 Click object sender  EventArgs e        textBox1 Text      r nThread Sleeps        await Task Delay 3000       textBox1 Text      r nThread awakens        Here you can read more about Task Delay and Await

User · Answer

private void WaitNSeconds int seconds        if  seconds  lt  1  return      DateTime  desired   DateTime Now AddSeconds seconds       while  DateTime Now  lt   desired             Thread Sleep 1            System Windows Forms Application DoEvents

[c#] How can I perform a short delay in C# without using sleep?

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