NAME

sleep − suspend execution for an interval

SYNOPSIS

sleep time

DESCRIPTION

sleep suspends execution for time seconds.  It is used to execute a command after a certain amount of time, as in:

(sleep 105; command)&

or to execute a command periodically, as in:

while true
do
    command
    sleep 37
done

RETURN VALUE

sleep exits with one of the following values:

0 The execution was successfully suspended for time seconds, or a SIGALRM signal was received. 

>0 If the time operand is missing, is not a decimal integer, is negative, or is greater than UINT_MAX, sleep returns with exit status 2. 

SEE ALSO

alarm(2), sleep(3C). 

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

sleep: SVID2, XPG2, XPG3, POSIX.2

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 9.0: August 1992