According to MSDN, Sleep() can be provided INFINITE value and that "indicates that the suspension should not time out".
Why would I want to call Sleep() with INFINITE timeout in my program?
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298answers:
3
+3
A:
A sleep with no timeout does not need a timer. This reduces the overhead where you anticipate a variable-length wait but are absolutely sure that the thread will be resumed.
Steve De Caux
2009-12-11 08:10:48
I don't see how that can be used. The thread calls Sleep( INFINITE ); and freezes forever. How can it be resumed?
sharptooth
2009-12-30 12:18:58
Basically you send it an interrupt
Steve De Caux
2009-12-30 13:16:16
Emm... How exactly do I do that?
sharptooth
2009-12-31 10:09:25
@Sharptooth - why not throw it back to the forum as its own question ?
Steve De Caux
2009-12-31 12:01:26
Number one reason is that I have no idea what you're talking about and this actively prevents me from asking a good question.
sharptooth
2010-01-04 11:58:23
It's more something used in system programming, I doubt if it's relevant to you. Konami's original answer was pretty good, shame he deleted it.
Steve De Caux
2010-01-04 14:41:48
Okay, I see your point now.
sharptooth
2010-01-06 13:12:05
+3
A:
There's no reasons one in his sane mind would ever Sleep(INFINITE). It has no practical meaning.
It is for generality and symmetry to WaitForSingleObject(..., timeout) and SleepEx(timeout), where INFINITE does make sense.
Reminding, that SleepEx will try to consume things out of your thread's APC queue.
Pavel Radzivilovsky
2009-12-12 22:26:32
+2
A:
As far as I know, Sleep, since they introduced SleepEx, it's just a thin, convenient wrapper around SleepEx, and when they rewrote it as a wrapper, they decided just to pass the timeout parameter to SleepEx, without processing it in any way. Obviously in this way the behavior of the function with INFINITE as timeout is propagated also to Sleep (and so must be documented), although, without the bAlertable parameter of the SleepEx, it's completely useless (a Sleep(timeout) is equal to SleepEx(timeout, FALSE), so you'll have an infinite nonalertable wait).
On Windows CE, then, they may have decided to change this behavior because it was actually silly, so I think that a Sleep(INFINITE) on CE is translated automatically to a SuspendThread; however, on Windows they are probably forced to keep the "simple" behavior for compatibility reasons.
Matteo Italia
2009-12-15 02:05:05