xref: /freebsd/bin/sleep/sleep.1 (revision 2e3f49888ec8851bafb22011533217487764fdb0)
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32.Dd May 25, 2022
33.Dt SLEEP 1
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm sleep
37.Nd suspend execution for an interval of time
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Nm
40.Ar number Ns Op Ar unit
41.Ar ...
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Nm
45command suspends execution for a minimum of
46.Ar number
47seconds (the default, or unit
48.Cm s ) ,
49minutes (unit
50.Cm m ) ,
51hours (unit
52.Cm h ) ,
53or days (unit
54.Cm d ) .
55If multiple arguments are passed, the delay will be the sum of all values.
56.Pp
57If the
58.Nm
59command receives a signal, it takes the standard action.
60When the
61.Dv SIGINFO
62signal is received, the estimate of the amount of seconds left to
63sleep is printed on the standard output.
64.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
65The
66.Dv SIGALRM
67signal is not handled specially by this implementation.
68.Pp
69The
70.Nm
71command supports other time units than seconds,
72honors a non-integer number of time units to sleep in any form acceptable by
73.Xr strtod 3 ,
74and accepts more than one delay value.
75These are non-portable extensions, but they have also been implemented
76in GNU sh-utils since version 2.0a (released in 2002).
77.Sh EXIT STATUS
78.Ex -std
79.Sh EXAMPLES
80To schedule the execution of a command for
81.Va x
82number seconds later (with
83.Xr csh 1 ) :
84.Pp
85.Dl (sleep 1800; sh command_file >& errors)&
86.Pp
87This incantation would wait a half hour before
88running the script command_file.
89(See the
90.Xr at 1
91utility.)
92.Pp
93To reiteratively run a command (with the
94.Xr csh 1 ) :
95.Pp
96.Bd -literal -offset indent -compact
97while (1)
98	if (! -r zzz.rawdata) then
99		sleep 300
100	else
101		foreach i (`ls *.rawdata`)
102			sleep 70
103			awk -f collapse_data $i >> results
104		end
105		break
106	endif
107end
108.Ed
109.Pp
110The scenario for a script such as this might be: a program currently
111running is taking longer than expected to process a series of
112files, and it would be nice to have
113another program start processing the files created by the first
114program as soon as it is finished (when zzz.rawdata is created).
115The script checks every five minutes for the file zzz.rawdata,
116when the file is found, then another portion processing
117is done courteously by sleeping for 70 seconds in between each
118awk job.
119.Sh SEE ALSO
120.Xr nanosleep 2 ,
121.Xr sleep 3
122.Sh STANDARDS
123The
124.Nm
125command is expected to be
126.St -p1003.2
127compatible.
128.Sh HISTORY
129A
130.Nm
131command appeared in
132.At v4 .
133