Having program wait for a period of time

Question

I have a program that I am creating that will need to paint something to the panel every few seconds. I have some code like so:
public void paintBar(Graphics g, Graphics2D g2)
          for(int i = 0; i < 325; i++)
               //draw a rectangle
               double leftX = 36;
               double topY = 76;
               double width = i;
               double height = 48;
               double test = 100;
               Rectangle2D rect = new Rectangle2D.Double(leftX, topY, width, height);
               g2.setPaint(Color.yellow);
               g2.fill(rect); //fill rectangle with color
               g2.setPaint(new Color(204, 204, 153)); //change paint to background color for erase
               eraseMessage(g);
               calculatePercentage(i);
               g2.setPaint(Color.black); //change paint color back to black for message
               printMessage(g);
//NEED TO WAIT HERE FOR A PERIOD OF TIME
//THEN CONTINUE WITH LOOP.
The problem that I am having is that I tried to use different wait() meathods and it seems to get to the wait meathod and just freeze. The painting is never done until the wait command is complete and then the all of the painting is totally finished. I never see it progressing.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Answer 1

You could use a scheduled event...
public void run() {
     Timer timer = new Timer(false);          // Create Timer
     class Refresh extends java.util.TimerTask {     
          // Create repaint event
          public void run(){repaint();}
     timer.schedule(new Refresh(),0,10);     // Schedule repaint
}Call this when you run your program, and place all your paint and update methods into a paint(graphics g) method.
Then, the timer will continuously run repaint repeatedly.
You can then insert a single event timer (i don't know how off hand, but they are in the API under Timer events), that kills the origional event timer after X ammount of time.