xref: /netbsd-src/bin/sleep/sleep.1 (revision 60ab2ca5c0570c0013b39de285ddaa91fe27d029)
1.\"	$NetBSD: sleep.1,v 1.19 2007/08/18 00:41:52 hubertf Exp $
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3.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993, 1994
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33.\"	@(#)sleep.1	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
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
47utility
48suspends execution for a minimum of
49.Ar seconds .
50It is usually used to schedule the execution of other commands (see
51.Sx EXAMPLES
52below).
53.Pp
54Note: The
55.Nx
56.Nm
57command will accept and honor a non-integer number of specified seconds.
58This is a non-portable extension, and its use will nearly guarantee that
59a shell script will not execute properly on another system.
60.Sh EXIT STATUS
61The
62.Nm
63utility exits with one of the following values:
64.Bl -tag -width flag
65.It Li \&0
66On successful completion, or if the signal
67.Dv SIGALRM
68was received.
69.It Li \&\*[Gt]\&0
70An error occurred.
71.El
72.Sh EXAMPLES
73To schedule the execution of a command for 1800 seconds later:
74.Pp
75.Dl (sleep 1800; sh command_file \*[Gt]\*[Am] errors)\*[Am]
76.Pp
77This incantation would wait a half hour before
78running the script command_file.
79(See the
80.Xr at 1
81utility.)
82.Pp
83To reiteratively run a command (with the
84.Xr csh 1 ) :
85.Pp
86.Bd -literal -offset indent -compact
87while (1)
88	if (! -r zzz.rawdata) then
89		sleep 300
90	else
91		foreach i (*.rawdata)
92			sleep 70
93			awk -f collapse_data $i \*[Gt]\*[Gt] results
94		end
95		break
96	endif
97end
98.Ed
99.Pp
100The scenario for a script such as this might be: a program currently
101running is taking longer than expected to process a series of
102files, and it would be nice to have
103another program start processing the files created by the first
104program as soon as it is finished (when zzz.rawdata is created).
105The script checks every five minutes for the file zzz.rawdata,
106when the file is found, then another portion processing
107is done courteously by sleeping for 70 seconds in between each
108awk job.
109.Sh SEE ALSO
110.Xr at 1 ,
111.Xr nanosleep 2 ,
112.Xr sleep 3
113.Sh STANDARDS
114The
115.Nm
116command is expected to be
117.St -p1003.2
118compatible.
119