How to use nanosleep() in C? What are `tim.tv_sec`

Question

What is the use of tim.tv_sec and tim.tv_nsec in the following?

How can I sleep execution for 500000 microseconds?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int main()
{
   struct timespec tim, tim2;
   tim.tv_sec = 1;
   tim.tv_nsec = 500;

   if(nanosleep(&tim , &tim2) < 0 )   
   {
      printf("Nano sleep system call failed \n");
      return -1;
   }

   printf("Nano sleep successfull \n");

   return 0;
}

Answer 1

POSIX 7

First find the function: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/nanosleep.html

That contains a link to a time.h, which as a header should be where structs are defined:

The header shall declare the timespec structure, which shall include at least the following members:

time_t  tv_sec    Seconds. 
long    tv_nsec   Nanoseconds.

man 2 nanosleep

Pseudo-official glibc docs which you should always check for syscalls:

struct timespec {
    time_t tv_sec;        /* seconds */
    long   tv_nsec;       /* nanoseconds */
};

Answer 2

Half a second is 500,000,000 nanoseconds, so your code should read:

tim.tv_sec  = 0;
tim.tv_nsec = 500000000L;

As things stand, you code is sleeping for 1.0000005s (1s + 500ns).

Answer 3

This worked for me ....

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>   /* Needed for struct timespec */


int nsleep(long miliseconds)
{
   struct timespec req, rem;

   if(miliseconds > 999)
   {   
        req.tv_sec = (int)(miliseconds / 1000);                            /* Must be Non-Negative */
        req.tv_nsec = (miliseconds - ((long)req.tv_sec * 1000)) * 1000000; /* Must be in range of 0 to 999999999 */
   }   
   else
   {   
        req.tv_sec = 0;                         /* Must be Non-Negative */
        req.tv_nsec = miliseconds * 1000000;    /* Must be in range of 0 to 999999999 */
   }   

   return nanosleep(&req , &rem);
}

int main()
{
   int ret = nsleep(2500);
   printf("sleep result %d\n",ret);
   return 0;
}

Answer 4

500000 microseconds are 500000000 nanoseconds. You only wait for 500 ns = 0.5 µs.

Answer 5

tv_nsec is the sleep time in nanoseconds. 500000us = 500000000ns, so you want:

nanosleep((const struct timespec[]){{0, 500000000L}}, NULL);

Answer 6

I usually use some #define and constants to make the calculation easy:

#define NANO_SECOND_MULTIPLIER  1000000  // 1 millisecond = 1,000,000 Nanoseconds
const long INTERVAL_MS = 500 * NANO_SECOND_MULTIPLIER;

Hence my code would look like this:

timespec sleepValue = {0};

sleepValue.tv_nsec = INTERVAL_MS;
nanosleep(&sleepValue, NULL);