This is probably something simple i'm missing, but i have written a program that will take a raw data file, and convert it to HTML and output the the webpages. This needs to happen every hour, as other software updates the raw data logs. My problem is that I can not make my java program wait in the background until each new hour roles around. My program essentially needs to run forever, obtaining the raw file and processing it about 5 minutes after the hour. Does anybody have a suggestion for this. I tried just using a while loop that checks the Date class for the time, but the CPU resourse usage is maxed, which is not good

i would advise using a while loop to put it in infinite loop, and then, using Thread.sleep(int) ... think length is measured in thousandths of a second, but, could be wrong another option, if ye'r running linux, you can create a cron job to call the java prog once an hour at five minutes after

If you're running windows, then use an AT job. Having a program 'run forever' and check the date is really not an ideal solution.

Another approach would be to use a Java Timer and a TimerTask. http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/threads/timer.html You can create a Timer to run as a daemon thread.