[R] Summary: 'pausing' in R (fwd)

[Gardar Johannesson]

The question was:

> I have this 'odd' problem; I need to let R pause, for a given time, before
> starting next iteration in a loop.  I'm using the following to do this
> task, but feel a little bit guilty because I'm using as much CPU time as I
> can get while pausing:
> 
> while(keepGoing) {
>   t.end <- proc.time()[3] + 5  ## the time this loop should end at
> 
>   [block of R commands]
> 	
>   while(proc.time()[3] < t.end) {}
> }
> 
> This guaranty, at least, 5 second evaluation time for each loop in the
> above case.
> 
> Can I delay the loop more efficiently, that is, not using as much CPU time
> as in the above case?


Prof Brian D Ripley was the only one how responded (thanks) to the
original posting.  His suggestion works perfectly for me, and his respond
follows:

############################
Try

system("sleep 5")

That will use essentially no CPU time, but it will block the process.
That stops re-sizing graphics windows for examples, but on Unix
is not too serious.  I am not sure of the effect on the GNOME console,
nor what happens if tcltk is running.

If anyone wants to do this on Windows. take a look at the xgobi
function in the current version of the XGobi package, as that package
has an equivalent in C (that does handle events during the pause).

We do plan to have a version of this for all platforms in due course.
##################


By the way; is it 'required' to write a summary of responses and post to
r-help? (e.g., as on the s-news list.)


Thanks,
Gardar

_________________________________________________________
Gardar Johannesson		     Home Addr.
 Department of Statistics              605 Dennison, #3
Ohio State University                  Columbus, OH 43215
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Tel: 614-292-6038
Fax: 614-292-2096
e-mail: gardar at stat.ohio-state.edu
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