Sleep in Dart

Introduction

Sleeping in programming refers to delaying the execution of a program for a certain amount of time. In Dart, you can make use of the Future class along with the async and await keywords to introduce pauses or delays in your code execution. This can be useful in scenarios where you want to wait for a certain period of time before proceeding with the rest of the code.

Syntax

The general syntax to sleep in Dart is as follows:

import 'dart:async';

void main() async {
  // Delay for 2 seconds
  await Future.delayed(Duration(seconds: 2));

  // Rest of the code
}

Details

• The keyword async is used to define an asynchronous function, which allows the usage of await keyword inside it.
• The await keyword is used to pause the execution of the function until the awaited expression is completed.
• The Future.delayed() method is used to create a Future that completes after a specified duration. The duration is specified using the Duration class.

Example

import 'dart:async';

void main() async {
  print('Start');
  
  await Future.delayed(Duration(seconds: 2));
  
  print('Paused for 2 seconds');
  
  await Future.delayed(Duration(milliseconds: 500));
  
  print('Paused for 500 milliseconds');
  
  // Rest of the code
}

Output

Start
Paused for 2 seconds
Paused for 500 milliseconds

In the example above, the program starts execution and then pauses for 2 seconds using await Future.delayed(Duration(seconds: 2)). After that, it prints "Paused for 2 seconds". Similarly, it pauses for 500 milliseconds using await Future.delayed(Duration(milliseconds: 500)) and prints "Paused for 500 milliseconds".

Note: Sleeping should be used judiciously as it may lead to unresponsive or sluggish behavior in your application if not used properly.