xref: /freebsd/bin/sleep/sleep.1 (revision aa0a1e58)
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32.\"	@(#)sleep.1	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
33.\" $FreeBSD$
34.\"
35.Dd April 18, 1994
36.Dt SLEEP 1
37.Os
38.Sh NAME
39.Nm sleep
40.Nd suspend execution for an interval of time
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.Nm
43.Ar seconds
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Nm
47command
48suspends execution for a minimum of
49.Ar seconds .
50.Pp
51If the
52.Nm
53command receives a signal, it takes the standard action.
54When the
55.Dv SIGINFO
56signal is received, the estimate of the amount of seconds left to
57sleep is printed on the standard output.
58.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
59The
60.Dv SIGALRM
61signal is not handled specially by this implementation.
62.Pp
63The
64.Nm
65command allows and honors a non-integer number of seconds to sleep
66in any form acceptable by
67.Xr strtod 3 .
68This is a non-portable extension, and its use will nearly guarantee that
69a shell script will not execute properly on another system.
70.Sh EXIT STATUS
71.Ex -std
72.Sh EXAMPLES
73To schedule the execution of a command for
74.Va x
75number seconds later (with
76.Xr csh 1 ) :
77.Pp
78.Dl (sleep 1800; sh command_file >& errors)&
79.Pp
80This incantation would wait a half hour before
81running the script command_file.
82(See the
83.Xr at 1
84utility.)
85.Pp
86To reiteratively run a command (with the
87.Xr csh 1 ) :
88.Pp
89.Bd -literal -offset indent -compact
90while (1)
91	if (! -r zzz.rawdata) then
92		sleep 300
93	else
94		foreach i (`ls *.rawdata`)
95			sleep 70
96			awk -f collapse_data $i >> results
97		end
98		break
99	endif
100end
101.Ed
102.Pp
103The scenario for a script such as this might be: a program currently
104running is taking longer than expected to process a series of
105files, and it would be nice to have
106another program start processing the files created by the first
107program as soon as it is finished (when zzz.rawdata is created).
108The script checks every five minutes for the file zzz.rawdata,
109when the file is found, then another portion processing
110is done courteously by sleeping for 70 seconds in between each
111awk job.
112.Sh SEE ALSO
113.Xr nanosleep 2 ,
114.Xr sleep 3
115.Sh STANDARDS
116The
117.Nm
118command is expected to be
119.St -p1003.2
120compatible.
121.Sh HISTORY
122A
123.Nm
124command appeared in
125.At v4 .
126