Question

gcc 4.4.3
vc++ 2008

I would like to make a timer application would be portable on windows and linux. However, would be suffice to start with.

My idea is to start a timer and set it for a specified number of seconds. When the time expires call a callback function.

Is that the best way to do this?

Many thanks,

Answer 1

There are many ways to do a timer. It is not hard but you need to think exactly what you want. If you want to call a callback, you usually use a thread that sleep until your delay is elapsed, before calling your callback. If you don’t want to use a thread, you can call periodically a checker function that compute the time delta.

You api will be a function taking the delay and a function pointer plus the callback parameters. It will launch a thread that will sleep for the delay, then call the callback with the given parameters.

Check general purpose libraries, they usually have timers implemented (gtk+ glib, boost::timer I think).

my2c

Edit:

For the portability part, you have of course to write two versions of your timer function. If you use thread that means it is better to use a lib. As libs give you timers … Use a lib 🙂