sleep(1)                                                           sleep(1)

NAME
     sleep - suspend process execution for an interval

SYNOPSIS
     sleep time

DESCRIPTION
     The sleep command suspends the execution of the process that calls it
     for a user-defined period of time.

     sleep is used mainly in shell scripts to delay the execution of the
     next command.

ARGUMENTS
     time The time in seconds after which execution of the process is to
          resume. At least time seconds must elapse.

          time must be a non-negative decimal number.

ERROR MESSAGE
     sleep: bad character in argument

     You have used a negative integer or a non-numeric expression for time.

LOCALE
     The LCMESSAGES environment variable governs the language in which
     message texts are displayed. If LCMESSAGES is undefined or is defined
     as the null string, it defaults to the value of LANG. If LANG is like-
     wise undefined or null, the system acts as if it were not internation-
     alized.

     The LCALL environment variable governs the entire locale. LCALL
     takes precedence over all the other environment variables which affect
     internationalization.





















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sleep(1)                                                           sleep(1)

EXAMPLES
     Example 1

     This example makes use of sleep from the command line. You start a
     background process to remind yourself in 10 minutes (600 seconds) that
     you need to make a phone call.

     $ (sleep 600; echo 'Call Mr. Jones!')&

     Example 2

     In this example, sleep is used within a shell script named always,
     which calls the backup program every two minutes:

     $ cat always
     while true
        do
           backup
           sleep 120
        done

     If you run the always script as a background process, you will only be
     able to terminate it with kill, not with the <DEL> key.

SEE ALSO
     wait(1), alarm(2), sleep(3C).




























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