Creating a timeout using time and difftime - c

Question

gcc (GCC) 4.6.0 20110419 (Red Hat 4.6.0-5)
I am trying to get the time of start and end time. And get the difference between them.
The function I have is for creating a API for our existing hardware.
The API wait_events take one argument that is time in milli-seconds. So what I am trying to get the start before the while loop. And using time to get the number of seconds. Then after 1 iteration of the loop get the time difference and then compare that difference with the time out.
Many thanks for any suggestions,
/* Wait for an event up to a specified time out.
* If an event occurs before the time out return 0
* If an event timeouts out before an event return -1 */
int wait_events(int timeout_ms)
{
time_t start = 0;
time_t end = 0;
double time_diff = 0;
/* convert to seconds */
int timeout = timeout_ms / 100;
/* Get the initial time */
start = time(NULL);
while(TRUE) {
if(open_device_flag == TRUE) {
device_evt.event_id = EVENT_DEV_OPEN;
return TRUE;
}
/* Get the end time after each iteration */
end = time(NULL);
/* Get the difference between times */
time_diff = difftime(start, end);
if(time_diff > timeout) {
/* timed out before getting an event */
return FALSE;
}
}
}
The function that will call will be like this.
int main(void)
{
#define TIMEOUT 500 /* 1/2 sec */
while(TRUE) {
if(wait_events(TIMEOUT) != 0) {
/* Process incoming event */
printf("Event fired\n");
}
else {
printf("Event timed out\n");
}
}
return 0;
}
=============== EDIT with updated results ==================
1) With no sleep -> 99.7% - 100% CPU
2) Setting usleep(10) -> 25% CPU
3) Setting usleep(100) -> 13% CPU
3) Setting usleep(1000) -> 2.6% CPU
4) Setting usleep(10000) -> 0.3 - 0.7% CPU

Answer 1

You're overcomplicating it - simplified:
time_t start = time();
for (;;) {
// try something
if (time() > start + 5) {
printf("5s timeout!\n");
break;
}
}
time_t should in general just be an int or long int depending on your platform counting the number of seconds since January 1st 1970.
Side note:
int timeout = timeout_ms / 1000;
One second consists of 1000 milliseconds.
Edit - another note:
You'll most likely have to ensure that the other thread(s) and/or event handling can happen, so include some kind of thread inactivity (using sleep(), nanosleep() or whatever).

Answer 2

Without calling a Sleep() function this a really bad design : your loop will use 100% of the CPU. Even if you are using threads, your other threads won't have much time to run as this thread will use many CPU cycles.
You should design something like that:
while(true) {
Sleep(100); // lets say you want a precision of 100 ms
// Do the compare time stuff here
}
If you need precision of the timing and are using different threads/processes, use Mutexes (semaphores with a increment/decrement of 1) or Critical Sections to make sure the time compare of your function is not interrupted by another process/thread of your own.
I believe your Red Hat is a System V so you can sync using IPC