this Sleep() ....

[Dannoo007]

Hello forum,

It saw some issues in the past with Sleep(), but before I move on to alternatives (eg https://www.mql5.com/en/articles/1558 ) I am also not sure I got it right. Two issues:

1) In this EA I want to delay the buy/sell signal by 5 seconds, so under the MyEntrySignal() function I wrote something like below, but there is no delay so I'm surely missing something...

if (ConditionToBUY) {
	Sleep (5000); 
	return (SignalBUY);
} 

2) If I am using the Sleep() function in one of two EA's with the same Magic number - will the sleep affect both EAs or just his home EA?

Any insight ~most welcome!!!

Dan

[Simon Gniadkowski]

Sleep only effects the EA from which it is called. If you use this in the Strategy Tester you should be aware that some functions are " processed/passed without output " in the Strategy tester . . . Sleep() is one of them, more info here: Testing Features and Limits in MetaTrader 4 - MQL4 Articles

[William Roeder]

1. If you use Bid and Ask then you MUST call RefreshRates() after the Sleep().
2. If you want the delay to work in the tester try:

   int start(){
       static datetime delay; if (TimeCurrent() < delay) return(0);
       static int      next;  if (next == SignalBUY){
           next = SignalNone;
           int ticket = OrderSend(...
       }
       else{
          :
          if (ConditionToBUY) {
              next = SignalBuy;  delay = TimeCurrent() + 5; // 5 seconds
          }
       }
   }