Pause function in matlab for 1 millisecond

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Juan
Juan on 8 May 2012
Answered: Walter Roberson on 24 Apr 2023
Hi,
I need to pause my matlab program at GUI, because I'm using serial communication, but when I use pause command it only allows me to pause it for 0.01 seconds.
pause(0.01) %in seconds
The thing I need, for example:
pause(0.001) %in seconds, but actually doesn't works
Anyone knows how to pause matlab for 1 millisecond? Thanks for read and answer.
Greetings.
  2 Comments
chandan kumar
chandan kumar on 17 Jan 2017
Edited: Walter Roberson on 24 Apr 2023
Hello there,
First use:
pause on % to enable pause function
Now you can use pause function:
pause(x); // delay in seconds (x is non-negative real number)
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 17 Jan 2017
Pause is on by default.
On MS Windows, the resolution is only 0.01 seconds and using "pause on" does not change that.

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Answers (9)

Jan
Jan on 24 Oct 2015
Edited: Jan on 24 Oct 2015
There is an accurate timer in Java, which can be called directly in Matlab:
java.lang.Thread.sleep(duration*1000) % in mysec!

AndreasDerFuchs
AndreasDerFuchs on 4 Mar 2016
The attached pauses() matlab function combines the above ideas.
It can pause with an accuracy of 0.03 ms on my PC, without using too much CPU-bandwidth, as opposed to an accuracy of 0.8 ms with java.lang.Thread.sleep(ms), or the even worse accuracy of 15 ms with pause().
I've tested the accuracy with:
pauses(0); ii=1:300; d=ii/12345;
for i=ii;
t0=tic; pauses(d(i),t0); t(i)=toc(t0);
end;
fprintf('3 sigma accuracy = %.6f ms\n', std(t-d)*3000);
  2 Comments
akin hunerli
akin hunerli on 14 May 2016
hi Hamid Reza saadati, i have the problem with the pause command working on a guide interface then i realised that we have to add a pause command end of the code.
Toby Dewhurst
Toby Dewhurst on 10 Jun 2016
Works perfectly. Thanks for sharing!

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Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub on 8 May 2012
Getting millisecond timing accuracy is extremely difficult in most programming languages since the underlying clocks are just not that accurate. It really is a question of how much jitter you can tolerate.
That said, the "serial port" tag makes me think you should look at callback functions.

Andreas Goser
Andreas Goser on 8 May 2012
Edited: John Kelly on 27 May 2014
While Jakob's answer is a correct answer to your specific question, you might want to do something different, as the PAUSE command really stops MATLAB from doing stuff.

Malcolm Lidierth
Malcolm Lidierth on 19 May 2016
Edited: Malcolm Lidierth on 19 May 2016
Pause does more than cause a sleep (see the docs) e.g. it flushes the AWT/Swing EDT. The minimum delay will therefore reflect what needs to be done in the background. undocumentedmatlab.com has several relevant posts (see drawnow/pause)

Jakob Sørensen
Jakob Sørensen on 8 May 2012
Doesn't work how? And what Matlab version are you using? In R2011b, running Windows 7, I get the following results
>> tic;pause(0.001);toc;
Elapsed time is 0.009849 seconds.
Which is reasonably close to 1 ms.
  7 Comments
timo
timo on 2 Nov 2015
Elapsed time is 0.015487 seconds. Wtf
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 2 Nov 2015
R2015a on OS-X:
g = @() pause(0.001);
timeit(g, 0)
shows outputs between 0.001255 and 0.001404. (Be sure to use 0 as the second argument or else you end up measuring the time to return the "state" of the timer.)
The result is consistently higher than 1 1/4 millisecond and less than 1 1/2 millisecond in the tests I have done this way. Note that
tic(); pause(0.001); toc()
at the command line is not completely representative due to differences in what is JIT (Just In Time compiled)

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Marcel Kraemer
Marcel Kraemer on 5 Feb 2013
Edited: Marcel Kraemer on 5 Feb 2013
Hi Guys,
I had the same problem as you and I couldn't find an answer on the internet. So I tried following solution which works percetly well for me.
function delay(seconds)
% function pause the program
% seconds = delay time in seconds
tic;
while toc < seconds
end
end
Cheers, Marcel

Andreas Sprenger
Andreas Sprenger on 27 Sep 2013
Hi,
on a 32bit Windows System you may use a kernel function. It works quite accurate, I've tested it against hardware timer. Unfortunately I haven't found a solution on 64bit Win7. Any hints are welcome.
Cheers
Andreas
Here an example for 32bit Windows:
if ~libisloaded('QPerf')
% loads kernel functions for time measurement
loadlibrary ('kernel32.dll', @QueryPerformance, 'alias', 'QPerf')
end
% data structure for QueryPerformance...
Value.LowPart = uint32(0);
Value.HighPart = uint32(0);
QStruct = libstruct('s_ULARGE_INTEGER', Value);
% Get performance of the computer
[xval, QFreq] = calllib('QPerf', 'QueryPerformanceFrequency', QStruct);
Frequency = QFreq.HighPart*2^32 + QFreq.LowPart;
% Get t0
[~, QCounter] = calllib('QPerf', 'QueryPerformanceCounter', QStruct);
t0 = (QCounter.HighPart*2^32 + QCounter.LowPart) / Frequency * 1000;
t1 = t0;
% example: wait a second
while t1 - t0 < 1000
[~, QCounter] = calllib('QPerf', 'QueryPerformanceCounter', QStruct);
t1 = (QCounter.HighPart*2^32 + QCounter.LowPart) / Frequency * 1000;
end
% -----
function [methodinfo,structs,enuminfo] = QueryPerformance
%This function was generated by the perl file prototypes.pl called from loadlibary.m on Wed Apr 5 19:40:14 2006
%perl options:'win.i -outfile=QueryPerformance
ival={cell(1,0)}; % change 0 to the actual number of functions to preallocate the data.
fcns=struct('name',ival,'calltype',ival,'LHS',ival,'RHS',ival,'alias',ival);
structs=[];enuminfo=[];fcnNum=1;
% BOOL _stdcall QueryPerformanceCounter(LARGE_INTEGER *);
fcns.name{fcnNum}='QueryPerformanceCounter';
fcns.calltype{fcnNum}='stdcall';
fcns.LHS{fcnNum}='int32';
fcns.RHS{fcnNum}={'s_ULARGE_INTEGERPtr'};
fcnNum = fcnNum+1;
% BOOL _stdcall QueryPerformanceFrequency(LARGE_INTEGER *);
fcns.name{fcnNum}='QueryPerformanceFrequency';
fcns.calltype{fcnNum}='stdcall';
fcns.LHS{fcnNum}='int32';
fcns.RHS{fcnNum}={'s_ULARGE_INTEGERPtr'};
fcnNum = fcnNum+1;
structs.s_ULARGE_INTEGER.packing=8;
structs.s_ULARGE_INTEGER.members=struct('LowPart', 'uint32', 'HighPart', 'uint32');
methodinfo = fcns;
  2 Comments
Andreas Sprenger
Andreas Sprenger on 27 Sep 2013
Moved: DGM on 24 Apr 2023
Hi,
searching for a solution on 64bit Matlab I came across a workaround. Edit the prototype and change fcns.calltype from 'stdcall' (most common on 32bit Windows systems) to 'cdecl' (C type declaration). It works both on 32bit and 64bit Matlab systems. On 2013a there is a warning that the loader file will not be supported in future.
Andreas
Jan
Jan on 24 Oct 2015
Moved: DGM on 24 Apr 2023
Please do not post a question in the section for answers. See my new answer...

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Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 24 Apr 2023
The Windows task scheduler runs every 15 ms, so you cannot get 0.001 resolution without resorting to something like busy-wait.
See the extended discussion, with specific tests, at

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