after ms

Ms must be an integer giving a time in milliseconds. The command sleeps for ms milliseconds and then returns. While the command is sleeping the application does not respond to events.

Discussion and Examples

RS - The after command serves several functions:

• after nn -- suspend operation for nn msec
• after nn body -- register body to be executed after nn msec
• after cancel id -- withdraw a registered body
• ...

See the official documentation at

http://www.purl.org/tcl/home/man/tcl8.5/TclCmd/after.htm .

RJM2004-07-29: When short (< 10 ms), well defined intervals are desired, do not be tempted to use after nn. Instead use

 after ''nn'' {set _ 0}; vwait _    ;# or another variable name

This keeps the event loop alive. I found out that a simple after 1 may yield a very different result (Win98/266MHz 4-5 ms; W2K/1200MHz 15-16 ms), while the result is reasonable accurate when the code example above is used. But from after 2 on, both variations yield much too high delays (at least on the windows platform).

Repeated action is a typical application, e.g. this little timer from the Bag of Tk algorithms:

Clock display on label:

 proc clock:set var {
   global $var
   set $var [clock format [clock seconds] -format %H:%M:%S]
   after 800 [list clock:set $var]
 }

 pack [label .l -textvariable myclock]
 clock:set myclock          ;# call once, keeps ticking ;-) RS

This is not a recursion, the next instance of clock:set will be started long after the current has returned, and it won't go deeper in stack level.

The command will be restarted every 800 msec (in this case), with a different id each time. For keeping the current id for canceling,

See also An analog clock in Tk which is powered by after. KBK (15 November 2000) Countdown program has a better discussion of what's going on. (I feel justified in saying this, since I wrote both of them.)

Here's a sugaring for after where you specify absolute time, like for a scheduler:

 proc at {time args} {
   if {[llength $args]==1} {set args [lindex $args 0]}
   set dt [expr {([clock scan $time]-[clock seconds])*1000}]
   after $dt $args
 } ;# RS
 at 9:31 puts Hello
 at 9:32 {puts "Hello again!"}

If you need something to schedule, this little alert packages details from tk_dialog away, and may reappear after 5 minutes:

 proc alert {time text} {
  if [tk_dialog .[clock clicks] "Alert at $time" $text info 0 OK Re-Alert] {
    after 300000 [list alert $time $text]
  }
 }
 at 9:55 alert 10:00 "Meeting in 5 minutes"

['Xplain bout how "after 0 $script" is valuable, and also safer than "after idle $script", 'cause an "after idle" body can't "after idle".]

[Lars H, 29 Aug 2004: Yes, someone please do that. Also explain the

  after 0 {after idle {callSomeProc}}

which seems to be preferable to both of them. What is it that makes it so?]

FW: If when executing eg this:

 proc again {} {
   puts "Hello."
   after 1000 again
 }

... If I change the system time backwards an hour in Windows as the script is running, I stop receiving "hellos". I'm guessing the event loop schedules "after" events to occur at a certain fixed time, dependent on the system clock (so of course setting the time backwards will postpone scheduled "after" events), but WHY? Why not just use an internal clicker rather than the system clock? And more importantly (for my project) is there a way to avoid this behavior?

For an example of how to cache idle commands, see: idle

When using after with tcl, you need to call vwait to start the event loop.

Chang LI

This program used array to arrange the intervals of events.

 proc print {} {
        global ary state
        puts "$state $ary($state)"
 }

 proc timer {} {
        global ary state num

        print
        after $ary($state) {
                set state [expr ($state+1)%$num]
                timer
        }
 }

 array set ary {0 100 1 200 2 300 3 400 4 500}

 set num [array size ary]
 set state 0
 timer

Question (14Jul2003)

How to stop execution of a procedure from within another procedure?

FW: Try setting up an after task that starts immediately, running the procedure. When you first invoke your procedure do something like this:

  set aid [after 0 {myProc}]

Then to stop the execution:

  after cancel $aid

On Oct. 7, 2003, aricb wrote on c.l.t.:

After has a "synchronous" mode and an "asynchronous" mode. The synchronous mode is in the form [after $milliseconds]. In this case Tcl does nothing for $milliseconds. Then it processes the next line in your script.

The asynchronous mode is [after $milliseconds $script], where Tcl schedules $script to execute (via the event loop) after $milliseconds has passed. Tcl then returns to whatever else it was doing. In this case, after returns an id which you can use in conjunction with [after cancel $id] or [after info $id].

Here are a couple of procs to demonstrate the difference:

   proc sync {} {
       after 1000
       puts "message 1"
       puts "message 2"
   }

   proc async {} {
       after 1000 [list puts "message 1"]
       puts "message 2"
   }

Arjen mentions, "I have used after to create tail-recursive procedures". (AM See the page Tail call optimization for an example and more discussion)

RJM added a comment regarding small interval accuracy in the top section of the document.

caspian: When you use the "after" command to make your script wait for a period of time, the rest of your script will not wait up for the line(s) that are passed through to the after command. For example, this code:

 puts "I know"
 after 500 {puts "Tcl"}
 puts "and Tk"

Will output:

 I know
 and Tk
 # Then, 500 milliseconds later:
 Tcl

To make "and Tk" appear after "Tcl", you must make "and Tk" wait for an equal or greater amount of time as "Tcl". To wit:

 puts "I know"
 after 500 {puts "Tcl"}
 after 500 {puts "and Tk"}

This will output:

 I know
 # Then, 500 milliseconds later:
 Tcl
 and Tk

Another way to solve this problem is by using vwait like this:

 set wait 0
 puts "I know"
 
 vwait wait
 after 500 {set wait 1}
 puts "and Tk"

rdt says: don't you have to do the 'after 500 ...' _before_ you do the 'tkwait ...' ?? RJ - Absolutely - once in the event loop, no further commands are processed, so the after never gets registered. This is a wait forever.

MG The other option is to just use the form of after which pauses execution completely, instead of the form caspian used which executes one particular command after a delay:

  puts "I know"
  after 500
  puts "Tcl"
  puts "and Tk"

AMucha 2008/07/28 after cancel script deletes exactly one instance! I accumulated heaps of after-procs in an overloaded text widget (trying to be super clever) with an

 after cancel show:detail
 after idle {sfter 5000 show:detail}

show:detail uses several functions of the textwidget and (tried to) clear up with its own 'after cancel show:detail' at the end.

Demo showing this:

    proc hello {} {puts hello}
    for {set n 1} {$n<=4} {incr n} {
        after 20000 hello
    }
    foreach id [after info] {
        puts "$id [after info $id]"
    }
    after cancel hello
    puts "===================="
    foreach id [after info] {
        puts "$id [after info $id]"
    }
    exit

Despite the word "match" in the manpage there is no globbing. eg 'after cancel hell*' does not work.

See also

• after command extended
• bgsleep