[erlang-questions] About erlang:statistics/1 and timeout values

[Per Melin]

Oscar Hellström:
> back to (part of) the original question, how would we go about
> decrementing a timeout value between blocking calls. I could use now
> diffs, or erlang:start_timer/3... are there better ways?

Can it really be simpler than now_diff/2?

loop(Timeout) when Timeout > 0 ->
    Before = now(),
    receive
        X ->
            % Do whatever
            loop(Timeout - timer:now_diff(now(), Before) div 1000)
    after Timeout ->
       loop(0)
    end;
loop(_) ->
    timeout.

(If I needed millisecond precision I would do it a little different
just to be sure.)