If an accurate delay is required, or if there are other tasks that can be performed during the delay, then using a timer to generate an interrupt is the best way to proceed.
If these are not issues in your code, then you can use the compiler’s
in-built delay pseudo-functions: _delay(),
__delay_ms() or __delay_us() (see _delay Builtin).
These all expand into in-line assembly instructions or a (nested) loop of instructions
that will consume the specified number of cycles or time. The delay argument must be a
constant and less than 50,463,240. To use the __delay_ms() or
__delay_us() versions of the delay, the preprocessor macro
_XTAL_FREQ must be correctly defined to match the device clock
frequency.
Note that these code sequences will only use the nop
instruction and/or instructions which form a loop. The alternate watchdog versions of
these pseudo-functions, e.g., _delaywdt(), can use the
clrwdt instruction as well.