How to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds

Hi, folks

Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new to
COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)


-William

On 9 Sep 2004 20:24:23 -0700, "William  Cai" <caiwenliang@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Hi, list
>
>I am looking for the solution. Could anybody please tell me how to code
>instead of discussing if sleep is a Cobol standard function? Though
>your dicussion also helps me. :P
>
>Repeat my question.
>I wanna develop a COBOL program. The program will sleep several seconds
>according to user's input.

There are two kinds of sleep:

1. Run in a loop until n seconds have elapsed.
2. Tell the operating system to mark you asleep and wake you in n
seconds.

In human terms, 1. would not be called sleep, it would be called
wasting time. Unfortunately,  it is the best you can do in standard
Cobol.

working-storage section.
01  time-now.
10  hours                   pic  9(02).
10  minutes                 pic  9(02).
10  seconds                 pic  9(02).
10  hundredths              pic  9(02).
01  time-integer             pic  9(09).
01  wakeup-integer       pic  9(09).
linkage section.
01  sleep-duration        pic 9.

procedure division using sleep-duration.
perform read-clock
compute wakeup-integer = time-integer + (sleep-duration * 100)
perform read-clock until time-integer > wakeup-integer
goback.
read-clock.
accept time-now from time
compute time-integer =
((((hours * 60) + minutes) * 60) + seconds) * 100) + hundredths).

If your compiler supports Events or MultiThreading, find the Wait
function, have the program wait for an event that will never happen or
return an error in n seconds. That would be true sleep, type 2. above.

In article <x6qdnYOZU9SRkaPcRVn-pw@giganews.com>,
"JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote:

> Richard wrote: 
>
> Ah, not exactly. Starting with Win98 (and all the NT variants, 2K, XP),
> Windows has preemptive multi-tasking and will interrupt a CPU bound job to
> give cycles to other applications.
>
>

And they might get it working correctly in time for Win 2008...

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 14:57:56 +0800, "William Cai"
<wenliang_cai@yahoo.com.cn> wrote:

>Update my question:
>
>I list my program as below. But whatever I input, the program will sleep fo
r
>a very long time. I am sure not if the program hangs. Anyone can help? Than
k
>you.
>
>       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
>       PROGRAM-ID. EXAM1.
>       ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
>       DATA DIVISION.
>       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
>       77 SLEEP-SEC PIC 9.
>       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
>       S. DISPLAY 'THIS IS COBOL'.
>          DISPLAY 'PLEASE INPUT THE SECONDS FOR SLEEP'.
>          ACCEPT SLEEP-SEC.
>          DISPLAY 'WILL SLEEP ', SLEEP-SEC, ' SECONDS'.
>          CALL "sleep" USING SLEEP-SEC;
>          STOP RUN.
>
>"William Cai" <wenliang_cai@yahoo.com.cn> wrote in message
>news:chjjss$t76$1@mail.cn99.com...
>Hi, folks
>
>Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new to
>COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)

Sleep is not a *standard* Cobol function; is it a standard C function.
It appears you're calling the C function. If true, change sleep-sec to
binary pic 9(9)  and call using by value sleep-sec.

I use:

01 SLEEP-TIME           PIC 9(9)        COMP VALUE 500000.

(OS LINUX IN MY CASE, MF-COBOL)

ACCEPT SOME-NUM-FIELD AT 2479 WITH SIZE 1 AUTO TIMEOUT SLEEP-TIME.



William Cai wrote:

> Hi, folks
>
> Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new
> to COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)
>
>
> -William

--
Vaclav Snajdr

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 14:57:56 +0800, "William Cai"
<wenliang_cai@yahoo.com.cn> wrote:

>Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new to
>COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)

If my suggested fix works, you might do one or both of the following:

1. Write a prototype of the sleep function in Cobol and put it at the
top of your program. It would have prevented the type mismatch.
Your instructor probably never saw a Cobol prototype. If your compiler
supports this feature (Micro Focus does), you'll get an A.

2. Tell your instructor he's not teaching Cobol when he has you call a
foreign function. You'll have the satisfaction of being right, even
though you'll get a C.

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 14:29:25 -0500, "JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com>
wrote:

>Ah, not exactly. Starting with Win98 (and all the NT variants, 2K, XP),
>Windows has preemptive multi-tasking and will interrupt a CPU bound job to
>give cycles to other applications.

Correction: starting with Win95.

http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstat...95/techdiff.asp

To add to Frederico Fonseca's answer:

COBOL does not include a "sleep" function up to and including COBOL-85.

There might(!) be a COBOL intrinsic standard function that performs this
function (I don't know...check yourself).

There might(!) be a COBOL standard "sleep" function in the COBOL-2002
standard (or beyond). I don't know!

Assuming there is no standard "sleep" function then do the following:

1. Write a COBOL function (within OOCOBOL: a COBOL static function),
calling a system dependent(!) "sleep" routine.
2. Let your program call this (static) COBOL function when required.

This 2-phase call structure will accomplish the following:

It will prevent a massive recompile of many COBOL programmes in case you
have to change the environment or "sleep" routine.

Thus:

COBOL programs (many) -- calls -> COBOL "sleep" routine (independent) --
calls -> "sleep" routine (system dependent)

Notice that in the worst case scenario the system dependent "sleep"
routine must be replaced and maybe the COBOL "sleep" routine must be
modified (calling a different system dependent "sleep" routine name and/or
parameters).

There is, and will be, only one COBOL "sleep" routine.

The call structure relationship is thus as follows:
many COBOL programs calling 1 COBOL "sleep" routine calling 1 system
dependent "sleep" routine.

Using a construction as described as above makes your system more robust
and more adaptable for change.

I hope I was clear enough...regards, Wim Ahlers.

P.S. I don't care what the system dependent sleep routine looks like
(assembler, C++, LE routines (C), or whatever...).

Although it is not very efficient from a CPU perspective (and not exact,
although many OS sleep's are not exact either), you could do something like:

....
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 THE-TIME.
03 THE-TIME-HH             PIC 99.
03 THE-TIME-MM            PIC 99.
03 THE-TIME-SS             PIC 99.
01 FIVE-SECONDS-LATER   PIC 99.
...
...
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
...
...
ACCEPT THE-TIME FROM TIME.
ADD THE-TIME-SS, 5 GIVING FIVE-SECONDS-LATER.
IF FIVE-SECONDS-LATER >= 60
SUBTRACT 60 FROM FIVE-SECONDS-LATER.
PERFORM UNTIL THE-TIME-SS = FIVE-SECONDS-LATER
ACCEPT THE-TIME FROM TIME
END-PERFORM.

I did this off the top of my head with no testing (and I don't use this
method in practice), so you may need to tweak....

(The reason this is not exact is ACCEPT FROM TIME could execute in the
middle of a second.)

"William Cai" <wenliang_cai@yahoo.com.cn> wrote in message
news:chjjss$t76$1@mail.cn99.com...
> Hi, folks
>
> Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new
to
> COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)
>
>
> -William
>
>

What compiler and operating system are you running on?  I know how to do thi
s on
a few, but it is NOT portable across systems and compilers.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"William Cai" <wenliang_cai@yahoo.com.cn> wrote in message
news:chjjss$t76$1@mail.cn99.com...
> Hi, folks
>
> Anybody can tell me how to let a COBOL program sleep 5 seconds? I am new t
o
> COBOL. Sorry for the stupid question. :)
>
>
> -William
>
>