sleep suspends execution for at least the integral number of seconds specified by time.
ksh93
sleep suspends execution for at least the time in seconds specified by time or until a SIGALRM signal is received.
OPERANDS
/usr/bin/sleep
The following operands are supported for /usr/bin/sleep:
time
time in seconds can be specified as a non-negative decimal integer number.
ksh93
The following operands are supported:
time
Specify time in seconds as a floating point number. The actual granularity depends on the underlying system, normally around 1 millisecond.
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Suspending Command Execution
The following example executes a command after a certain amount of time:
example% (sleep 105; command)&
Example 2 Executing a Command Every So Often
The following example executes 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:
