usr/src/bin/sleep/sleep.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1990 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\"
.\"     @(#)sleep.1     6.4 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.Dd
.Dt SLEEP 1
.Os BSD 4.4
.Sh NAME
.Nm sleep
.Nd suspend execution for an interval of time
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm sleep
.Ar seconds
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm sleep
command
suspends execution for a minimum of
.Ar seconds .
.Nm Sleep
is used to schedule the execution of other commands (see
EXAMPLES below).
.Pp
The
.Nm Sleep
utility exits with one of the following values:
.Tw Ds
.Tp Li \&0
On successful completetion, or if the signal SIGALRM was received.
.Tp Li \&>\&0
An error occurred.
.Tp
.Sh EXAMPLES
To schedule the execution of a command for
.Va x
number seconds later:
.Pp
.Dl (sleep 1800; sh command_file >& errors)&
.Pp
This incantation would wait a half hour before
running the script command_file. (See the
.Xr at 1
utility.)
.Pp
To reiteratively run a command (with the
.Xr csh 1 ) :
.Pp
.Ds I
while (1)
        if (! -r zzz.rawdata) then
                sleep 300
        else
                foreach i (`ls *.rawdata`)
                        sleep 70
                        awk -f collapse_data $i >> results
                end
                break
        endif
end
.De
.Pp
The scenario for a script such as this might be: a program currently
running is taking longer than expected to process a series of
files, and it would be nice to have
another program start processing the files created by the first
program as soon as it is finished (when zzz.rawdata is created).
The script checks every five minutes for the file zzz.rawdata,
when the file is found, then another portion processing
is done curteously by sleeping for 70 seconds in between each
awk job.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr setitimer 2 ,
.Xr alarm 3 ,
.Xr sleep 3 ,
.Xr at 1
.Sh STANDARDS
The sleep function is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compatible.