From: "Rafael García" <rafael AT geninfor DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: pause() in idle programas
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 10:26:10 +0100
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Hello all, I have an interesting question (I think) about multitasking djgpp
programs under Windows

I have an interactive program that show a menu and wait for the user to take
an action. When it is acomplished, it goes newly to the loop for the
keyboard and so on.

I need to maintain de control while in the pause because I need to do some
light work, for example, to show the time, search for new files in some
directory...  so I cannot stop with a getch() to read the keyboard.

My loop is something like this:

int getoption() {
   while (!kbhit())     // wait until user touch keyboard
      maintenance();
   return getch();
   }

well, this works, but I think it is a waste of time to the operating system
while I am working with other programs. I thougth of this:


int getoption() {
   while (!kbhit()) {
      pause();                  // or delay(50)
      maintenance();
      }
   return getch();
   }

this must do a better work in distributing CPU power between multiple
programs, but I have found that this makes other proccess to perform much
poorly.

How is it possible?