NAME

sleep — suspend process execution for an interval measured in seconds

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include < unistd.h>

unsigned int
sleep( unsigned int seconds);

DESCRIPTION

The sleep() function suspends execution of the calling process until either seconds seconds have elapsed or a signal is delivered to the process and its action is to invoke a signal-catching function or to terminate the process. System activity may lengthen the sleep by an indeterminate amount.

This function is implemented using nanosleep(2) by pausing for seconds seconds or until a signal occurs. Consequently, in this implementation, sleeping has no effect on the state of process timers, and there is no special handling for SIGALRM.

RETURN VALUES

If the sleep() function returns because the requested time has elapsed, the value returned will be zero. If the sleep() function returns due to the delivery of a signal, the value returned will be the unslept amount (the requested time minus the time actually slept) in seconds.

SEE ALSO

nanosleep(2), usleep(3)

STANDARDS

The sleep() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

A sleep() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.