Synchronous delay in code execution

Question

I have a code which needs to be executed after some delay say 5000 ms.Currently I am using setTimeout but it is asynchronous and i want the execution to wait for its return.

Answer 1

Node solution

Use fs.existsSync() to delay

const fs = require('fs');
const uuidv4 = require('uuid/v4');

/**
 * Tie up execution for at-least the given number of millis.  This is not efficient.
 * @param millis Min number of millis to wait
 */
function sleepSync(millis) {
    if (millis <= 0) return;
    const proceedAt = Date.now() + millis;
    while (Date.now() < proceedAt) fs.existsSync(uuidv4());
}

fs.existsSync(uuidv4()) is intended to do a few things:

1. Occupy the thread by generating a uuid and looking for a non-existent file
2. New uuid each time defeats the file system cache
3. Looking for a file is likely an optimised operation that should allow other activity to continue (i.e. not pin the CPU)