sleep

suspend execution for a specified time 

Command

SYNOPSIS

sleep seconds

DESCRIPTION

The sleep command continues running until the specified number of seconds has elapsed. sleep can delay execution of a program or produce periodic execution in conjunction with shell commands.

The seconds argument can be either a number of seconds or a more general time description of the form nhnmns, with nh, nm, and s being optional.

EXAMPLES

sleep 20h10m

sleeps for 20 hours and 10 minutes (or 72600 seconds).

DIAGNOSTICS

Possible exit status values are:

0 

Successful completion.

2 

Failure because seconds value was not specified or is invalid (for example, invalid format).

PORTABILITY

POSIX.2. x/OPEN Portability Guide 4.0. All UNIX systems. Windows 2000. Windows XP. Windows Server 2003. Windows Vista.

The nhnmns argument format is an extension to the POSIX.2 standard.

AVAILABILITY

MKS Toolkit for Power Users
MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
MKS Toolkit for Developers
MKS Toolkit for Interoperability
MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition

SEE ALSO

Commands:
date, time

MKS Toolkit 9.2 Documentation Build 16.