A C command

[sum7]

Guys, when i was using turboC compiler in windows, i was using a command called delay(), which delays the execution by given amount of time.
It was included in a file dos.h.
Its obvious that i cannot include the same file in gcc.
Does anyone know the equivalent command in gcc?

[GNU-Fan]

sleep(3): Sleep for specified number of seconds - Linux man page

[sum7]

Thanks dude.. Can i know the same for clearing the screen? Like the one clrscr()
...

[GNU-Fan]

This is not as easy as before. You can make a loop with 100 newlines or so.

If you need more throughout access to the console display or want to catch single key hits, you can use
ncurses(3) - Linux man page

[Cabhan]

This is not as elegant, but there is a command "clear" that will clear the screen. If you don't want to use ncurses or anything like that, you might just try:

system("clear");

Not the best, and it does involve a fork()/exec(), but it might be the simplest.

[wje_lf]

You can make a loop with 100 newlines or so.

Ouch.

Unless you really want ncurses in all its ugly glory, you don't want the ncurses man page. You want the curs_terminfo man page and the curs_kernel man page.

And even those are a pain to read. Normally I'd rub a person's nose in a man page, but I suspect this is time for an exception. Here's something to get you started in low-level ncurses use. Execute this shell script and see what happens.

#!/bin/sh

cat > monday.c <<EOD
#include <curses.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <term.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(void)
{
  int   error_return;

  char *term_type_name;

  /* Do these things once, at the beginning of your program. */

  term_type_name=getenv("TERM");

  if(term_type_name==NULL)
  {
    fprintf(stderr,"getenv() failed\n");

    exit(1);
  }

  if(setupterm(term_type_name,
               STDOUT_FILENO,
               &error_return
              )
    )
  {
    fprintf(stderr,"setupterm() failed\n");

    exit(1);
  }

  def_shell_mode();

  /* End of things to do at the beginning of your program. */

  /* Now, knock yourself out: */

  printf("xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\n");

  printf("Now you see it.\n");

  sleep(3);

  putp(clear_screen);

  printf("Now you don't.\n");

  sleep(3);

  /* Things to do when exiting your program: */

  reset_shell_mode();

  return 0;

} /* main() */
EOD

gcc -Wall -lcurses monday.c -o monday

monday

Hope this helps.