Creating a Delay in lua

Question

I'm making a IRC client using LUA. I'm using the the libraries that came with "Lua for Windows ". So I'm using luasocket for the comms and IUP for the UI bits.

The problem I'm having is that I'm getting stuck in a loop when I read the IO. I tried the timer in IUP but that didn't seem to work.

I'm was looking for a way to delay the IO read loop.

I set the time out for the reads to 0 and that worked.

Answer 1

You are probably making a blocking read on a TCP socket inside the GUI thread. That will lock up your whole application if you do not receive the expected data in a timely manner. Either perform the socket I/O in a separate thread (see Lua Lanes) or use non-blocking I/O (see settimeout).

The Kepler Project is a great resource for guidance on networking applications with Lua, but it is focused on web applications versus an IRC client. For example, the Copas library uses Lua coroutines to handle multiple TCP connections.

Now if you really just wanted to know how to create a delay in Lua, then the Sleep Function article in the lua-users wiki should provide all the information you need.