RE: How to make a program "sleep" for an amount of time?

["Hewitt, Rory" <rory.hewitt@xxxxxx>]

Mike,
 
As others have pointed out, you can use the 'sleep()' function or the
'_WAITTIME' function or the DLYJOB command to simply wait for a period
of time.
 
However, all of these options don't give you much flexibility in terms
of the amount of time you want to sleep for. An option I like to use is
the QRCVDTAQ API with a wait time of -1 (forever) to wait for an entry
to appear on the data queue. Then you can have another process (another
program or a command) add an entry to the data queue (using the QSNDDTAQ
API) to 'wake up' your program. This is the easiest example of a
never-ending-program (NEP) - your program sleeps until it receives a
data queue entry, processes that data queue entry (or does some sort of
processing) and then goes back to sleep again.
 
This gives you total flexibility - you can decide when you want your
program to wake up. You can also include data in your data queue entry
to provide instructions on what the program should do - simply wake up,
end normally, do some other processing etc...
 
Regards,
 
Rory 
 
Rory M. Hewitt
Software Architect
Computer Associates
t: (650) 534-9056
f: (650) 534-9019
e: rory.hewitt@xxxxxx