Time delay in C

Difficulty Level : Easy
Last Updated : 18 Dec, 2019

In this post, we will see how to give a time delay in C code. Basic idea is to get current clock and add the required delay to that clock, till current clock is less then required clock run an empty loop.

Here is implementation with a delay function.

// C function showing how to do time delay
#include <stdio.h>
// To use time library of C
#include <time.h>
  
void delay(int number_of_seconds)
{
    // Converting time into milli_seconds
    int milli_seconds = 1000 * number_of_seconds;
  
    // Storing start time
    clock_t start_time = clock();
  
    // looping till required time is not achieved
    while (clock() < start_time + milli_seconds)
        ;
}
  
// Driver code to test above function
int main()
{
    int i;
    for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        // delay of one second
        delay(1);
        printf("%d seconds have passed\n", i + 1);
    }
    return 0;
}

Output:

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