> 
> I wonder also if now that midas requires stricter/newer c++ standards if there maybe
> some more straightforward method to sleep that is sufficiently robust and portable.
> 

I believe POSIX defined clock_nanosleep() & co, so on most recent machines that is the most portable way to sleep.

Historically, select() was the only way to sleep for less than 1 sec, but it was never portable
because of differences between BSD UNIX and Linux implementations. (MacOS is BSD UNIX via FreeBSD).

On difference is the update of struct timeval is select() is interrupted.

In this elog entry, I compare sleep using select() with sleep using clock_nanosleep() and see that there is no difference:
https://daq00.triumf.ca/elog-midas/Midas/2115

As you can see tmfe.cxx has both implementations, select() and clock_nanosleep(), and anybody can try which one works better on 
their computer.

K.O.