sleep - Man Page
delay for a specified amount of time
Examples (TL;DR)
- Delay in seconds:
sleep seconds - Execute a specific command after 20 seconds delay:
sleep 20 && command
Synopsis
sleep NUMBER[SUFFIX]...
sleep OPTION
Description
Pause for NUMBER seconds, where NUMBER is an integer or floating-point. SUFFIX may be 's','m','h', or 'd', for seconds, minutes, hours, days. With multiple arguments, pause for the sum of their values.
- --help
display this help and exit
- --version
output version information and exit
Author
Written by Jim Meyering and Paul Eggert.
Reporting Bugs
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Copyright
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
See Also
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sleep>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sleep invocation'
Referenced By
bpf(2), chat(8), clone(2), dbpmda(1), extraclangtools-19(1), ibv_read_counters(3), libuv(1), nut.conf(5), perlsyn(1), perlthrtut(1), pmCreateFetchGroup(3), pmpause(1), pthread_getcpuclockid(3), sd_event_add_child(3), sleep(3), tracefs_iterate_raw_events(3), ttyplot(1), usleep(1), valkey-modules-blocking-ops(7), xpanes(1).