sleep

- suspend execution for an interval

Synopsis

sleep time

Description

The sleep utility will suspend execution for at least the integral number of seconds specified by the time operand.

Operands

The following operands are supported:

time

A non-negative decimal integer specifying the number of seconds for which to suspend execution.

Examples

Example 1 Suspending command execution for a time

To execute a command after a certain amount of time:

example% (sleep 105; command)&

Example 2 Executing a command every so often

example% while true do command sleep 37 done

Environment Variables

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of sleep: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

0

The execution was successfully suspended for at least time seconds, or a SIGALRM signal was received (see NOTES).

>0

An error has occurred.

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

See Also

wait(1), alarm(2), sleep(3C), wait(3UCB), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)

Notes

If the sleep utility receives a SIGALRM signal, one of the following actions will be taken:

• Terminate normally with a zero exit status.

• Effectively ignore the signal.

The sleep utility will take the standard action for all other signals.