Pause for x seconds, how to?

Question

Hi,
I wanna write a routine that invokes an action every 2 seconds, is there a command like wait(2 seconds) or something similar in java?

Answer 1

> I wanna write a routine that invokes an action every 2
seconds, is there a command like wait(2 seconds) or
something similar in java?
You've actually described two different things...
Someone's already given the way to pause the current thread for a certain amount of time.
But if you really want to do something every few seconds, you might look into Threads and/or Timers. Sure, you could just have a loop somewhere in your app that...
(1) Does useful stuff,
(2) Waits for a few seconds,
(3) Rinse and repeat...
but if you're using AWT and/or Swing, you may find that your GUI stops updating during your pauses, which might be annoying.
Here's a little snippet you can add to a basic Swing app to see a very simple example of a Timer making a button flash...
    // ... other stuff ...
    private JButton exitButton = new JButton();
    private Timer exitButtonTimer = new Timer(250, new ActionListener()
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae)
            Color bg = exitButton.getBackground();
            Color fg = exitButton.getForeground();
            exitButton.setBackground(fg);
            exitButton.setForeground(bg);
    // then wherever you initialize your Swing components,
    // do this...
        exitButtonTimer.start();