Question

I want to write a small program that should print something like

testing CPU… done
testing RAM… done

and so on.

I wrote the following program in C:

printf( 'testing RAM...\t\t' ); sleep( sleep_time ); printf( 'done\n\n' );  printf( 'testing HDD...\t\t' ); sleep( sleep_time ); printf( 'done\n\n' ); 

where sleep_time is 2.

However, instead of printing ‘testing CPU…’ first, then waiting, then printing ‘done’, it first waits, then prints the whole line, which is not exactly what I had in mind.

I suppose this has something to do with automatic optimization by the compiler.
Anyway, what can I do to get the desired output?

I am using XCode 3.1 on OSX 10.5.6

Thank you,
Bastian

Answer 1

The issue is that your printings are buffered. immediately before sleeping, call fflush(stdout); to flush the buffer