CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xwaitsleep
Pietro Speroni
Pietro Speroni

Reputation: 3221

Is using a loop to wait more CPU-intensive in python than a sleep command?

On python 3 I need to stop until a certain time. And I need to be fairly precise on when I wake up. The problem is that in this pause I should do some calculations that will take part of that time. So I cannot just time.sleep() through it or I would start too late.

So I was thinking of running this code:

import time
wakeuptime=time.time()+20 #start again exactly 20 seconds from now
UnpredictablySlowFunction()  
while (time.time()<wakeuptime): 
    pass

I am a bit worried that this kind of loop might be more uselessly CPU-intensive than a normal time.sleep(). Especially considering the program should run in the background 24/7.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 475

Answers (1)

running.t
running.t

Reputation: 5709

As @tobias_k mentioned in comment, try this:

import time
wakeuptime=time.time()+20 #start again exactly 20 seconds from now
UnpredictablySlowFunction()  
time_left = wakeuptime -time.time()
time.sleep(time_left)

Upvotes: 7

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