How to Create a Thread which prints a word ervery 3 seconds in lua? (1 Viewer)

[reezy]

I need help with creating a Thread which gives out a word every 3 Seconds. ("Hallo")
And this should happen endless how to do this in lua?
Thanks for your time

 

[stetre]

By 'thread' do you mean a coroutine, or are you just happy with a single threaded script that does this and nothing else?

 

[reezy]

By 'thread' do you mean a coroutine, or are you just happy with a single threaded script that does this and nothing else?

the second would make me happy

 

[stetre]

the second would make me happy

That's fairly simple, with a few caveats (see below):

local next_time = os.time() + 3

while true do
    if os.time() > next_time then
        print(string.format("[%d] Hallo", os.time())) -- print also the current time
        next_time = next_time + 3
    end
end

The above code assumes that os.time() returns the time in seconds (which is not guaranteed on all systems, as stated in the manual), and even if it does, the resolution is 1 second. As a consequence, the interval between successive prints will be 3 seconds +/- 1 second.

If you need more precise timing, you must resort to an external library that provides you with a function that gives you a monothonic time with a better resolution.

One alternative is to use socket.gettime() from LuaSocket, and use it to replace os.time in the above code.

Another alternative is to use the MoonTimers module (wrote by myself), that provides you with asynchronous timers. With timers, your example could be something like this:

local timers = require("moontimers")

local function callback(tmr, exptime)
    print(string.format("[%.3f] Hallo!", timers.now()))
    tmr:start(exptime + 3)
end

-- Create a timer passing it the callback to execute at its expiration:
local T = timers.new(0, callback)
-- Start the timer:
T:start(timers.now() + 3)

-- Enter the event loop:
while true do
    timers.trigger()
end

EDIT: fixed link to os.time() in Lua manual.