sleep - Man Page

• Delay in seconds: sleep seconds
• Execute a specific command after 20 seconds delay: sleep 20 && command

tldr.sh

sleep NUMBER[SUFFIX]...
sleep OPTION

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

Written by Jim Meyering and Paul Eggert.

Report bugs to: <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>.
GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

Copyright © 2026 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.

sleep(3)

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sleep>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sleep invocation'