Sleeping in a batch file

Question

When writing a batch file to automate something on a Windows box  I ve needed to pause its execution for several seconds  usually in a test wait loop  waiting for a process to start   At the time  the best solution I could find uses ping  I kid you not  to achieve the desired effect  I ve found a better write-up of it here  which describes a callable  wait bat   implemented as follows    ping 127 0 0 1 -n 2 -w 1000  gt  nul  ping 127 0 0 1 -n  1  -w 1000 gt  nul   You can then include calls to wait bat in your own batch file  passing in the number of seconds to sleep   Apparently the Windows 2003 Resource Kit provides a Unix-like sleep command  at last    In the meantime  for those of us still using Windows nbsp XP  Windows 2000 or  sadly  Windows NT  is there a better way   I modified the sleep py script in the accepted answer  so that it defaults to one second if no arguments are passed on the command line   import time  sys  time sleep float sys argv 1   if len sys argv   gt  1 else 1

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UPDATE The timeout command  available from Windows Vista and onwards should be the command used  as described in another answer to this question   What follows here is an old answer  Old answer If you have Python installed  or don t mind installing it  it has other uses too     just create the following sleep py script and add it somewhere in your PATH  import time  sys  time sleep float sys argv 1     It will allow sub-second pauses  for example  1 5 sec  0 1  etc    should you have such a need  If you want to call it as sleep rather than sleep py  then you can add the  PY extension to your PATHEXT environment variable  On Windows  XP  you can edit it in  My Computer   Properties  menu    Advanced  tab    Environment Variables  button    System variables  frame

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You can also use a  vbs file to do specific timeouts   The code below creates the  vbs file  Put this near the top of you rbatch code   echo WScript sleep WScript Arguments 0   gt   cd  sleeper vbs    The code below then opens the  vbs and specifies how long to wait for   start  WAIT      cd  sleeper vbs   1000    In the above code  the  1000  is the value of time delay to be sent to the  vbs file in milliseconds  for example  1000 nbsp ms   1 nbsp s  You can alter this part to be however long you want   The code below deletes the  vbs file after you are done with it  Put this at the end of your batch file   del  f  q   cd  sleeper vbs    And here is the code all together so it s easy to copy   echo WScript sleep WScript Arguments 0   gt   cd  sleeper vbs  start  WAIT      cd  sleeper vbs   1000  del  f  q   cd  sleeper vbs

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The usage of ping is good  as long as you just want to  wait for a bit   This since you are dependent on other functions underneath  like your network working and the fact that there is nothing answering on 127 0 0 1   -   Maybe it is not very likely it fails  but it is not impossible      If you want to be sure that you are waiting exactly the specified time  you should use the sleep functionality  which also have the advantage that it doesn t use CPU power or wait for a network to become ready    To find an already made executable for sleep is the most convenient way  Just drop it into your Windows folder or any other part of your standard path and it is always available   Otherwise  if you have a compiling environment you can easily make one yourself  The Sleep function is available in kernel32 dll  so you just need to use that one   -  For VB   VBA declare the following in the beginning of your source to declare a sleep function   private Declare Sub Sleep Lib  kernel32  Alias  Sleep   byval dwMilliseconds as Long    For C     DllImport  kernel32 dll    static extern void Sleep uint dwMilliseconds     You ll find here more about this functionality  available since Windows 2000  in Sleep function  MSDN    In standard C  sleep   is included in the standard library and in Microsoft s Visual Studio C the function is named Sleep    if memory serves me   -  Those two takes the argument in seconds  not in milliseconds as the two previous declarations

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Even more lightweight than the Python solution is a Perl one-liner   To sleep for seven seconds put this in the BAT script   perl -e  sleep 7    This solution only provides a resolution of one second   If you need higher resolution then use the Time  HiRes module from CPAN  It provides usleep   which sleeps in microseconds and nanosleep   which sleeps in nanoseconds  both functions takes only integer arguments   See the Stack nbsp Overflow question How do I sleep for a millisecond in Perl  for further details   I have used ActivePerl for many years  It is very easy to install

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If you ve got PowerShell on your system  you can just execute this command   powershell -command  Start-Sleep -s 1      Edit  from my answer on a similar thread  people raised an issue where the amount of time powershell takes to start is significant compared to how long you re trying to wait for  If the accuracy of the wait time is important  ie a second or two extra delay is not acceptable   you can use this approach   powershell -command   sleepUntil    DateTime   Parse   date   time    AddSeconds 5    sleepDuration    sleepUntil Subtract  get-date   TotalMilliseconds  start-sleep -m  sleepDuration    This takes the time when the windows command was issued  and the powershell script sleeps until 5 seconds after that time  So as long as powershell takes less time to start than your sleep duration  this approach will work  it s around 600ms on my machine

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From Windows nbsp Vista on you have the TIMEOUT and SLEEP commands  but to use them on Windows nbsp XP or Windows Server 2003  you ll need the Windows Server 2003 resource tool kit   Here you have a good overview of sleep alternatives  the ping approach is the most popular as it will work on every Windows machine   but there s  at least  one not mentioned which  ab uses the W32TM  Time Service  command   w32tm  stripchart  computer localhost  period 1  dataonly  samples N   gt nul 2 gt  amp 1   Where you should replace the N with the seconds you want to pause  Also  it will work on every Windows system without prerequisites   Typeperf can also be used   typeperf   System Processor Queue Length  -si N -sc 1  gt nul   With mshta and javascript  can be used for sleep under a second    start     wait  min  realtime mshta  javascript setTimeout function   close     5000     This should be even more precise  for waiting under a second  - self compiling executable relying on  net    if   X     Y   end    JScript comment  echo off setlocal   del   n0 exe  q  f       For precision better call this like    call waitMS 500    in order to skip compilation in case there s already built  exe    as without pointed extension first the  exe will be called due to the ordering in PATEXT variable       for  f  tokens   delims     v in   dir  b  s  a -d   o -n   SystemRoot  Microsoft NET Framework  jsc exe    do      set  jsc   v     if not exist    n0 exe          jsc    nologo  w 0  out    n0 exe     dpsfnx0        n0 exe     endlocal  amp  exit  b  errorlevel         import System  import System Threading   var arguments String     Environment GetCommandLineArgs    function printHelp        Console WriteLine arguments 0    N        Console WriteLine   N - milliseconds to wait        Environment Exit 0          if arguments length lt 2       printHelp       try      var wait Int32 Int32 Parse arguments 1        System Threading Thread Sleep wait    catch err       Console WriteLine  Invalid Number passed        Environment Exit 1

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You can use ping   ping 127 0 0 1 -n 11 -w 1000  gt nul  2 gt nul    It will wait 10 seconds   The reason you have to use 11 is because the first ping goes out immediately  not after one second  The number should always be one more than the number of seconds you want to wait   Keep in mind that the purpose of the -w is not to wait one second  It s to ensure that you wait no more than one second in the event that there are network problems  ping on its own will send one ICMP packet per second  It s probably not required for localhost  but old habits die hard

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The Resource Kit has always included this  At least since Windows 2000   Also  the Cygwin package has a sleep - plop that into your PATH and include the cygwin dll  or whatever it s called  and way to go

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In Notepad  write    echo off set  a WAITTIME  1 1 PING 127 0 0 1 -n  WAITTIME   gt  nul goto eof   Now save as wait bat in the folder C  WINDOWS System32  then whenever you want to wait  use   CALL WAIT bat  lt whole number of seconds without quotes gt

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The timeout command is available from Windows nbsp Vista onwards   c   gt  timeout     TIMEOUT   T  timeout   NOBREAK   Description      This utility accepts a timeout parameter to wait for the specified     time period  in seconds  or until any key is pressed  It also     accepts a parameter to ignore the key press   Parameter List       T        timeout       Specifies the number of seconds to wait                              Valid range is -1 to 99999 seconds        NOBREAK                Ignore key presses and wait specified time                               Displays this help message   NOTE  A timeout value of -1 means to wait indefinitely for a key press   Examples      TIMEOUT        TIMEOUT  T 10     TIMEOUT  T 300  NOBREAK     TIMEOUT  T -1   Note  It does not work with input redirection - trivial example   C   gt echo 1   timeout  t 1  nobreak ERROR  Input redirection is not supported  exiting the process immediately

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Depending on your compatibility needs  either use ping   ping -n  lt numberofseconds 1 gt  localhost  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1   e g  to wait 5 seconds  use   ping -n 6 localhost  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1   or on Windows 7 or later use timeout   timeout 6  gt nul

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Just for fun  if you have Node js installed  you can use  node -e  setTimeout a   gt  a  5000     to sleep for 5 seconds  It works on a Mac with Node v12 14 0

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Just put this in your batch file where you want the wait    ping 127 0 0 1 -n 11 -w 1000  gt  null

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Since others are suggesting 3rd party programs  Python  Perl  custom app  etc   another option is GNU CoreUtils for Windows available at http   gnuwin32 sourceforge net packages coreutils htm   2 options for deployment    Install full package  which will include the full suite of CoreUtils  dependencies  documentation  etc   Install only the  sleep exe  binary and necessary dependencies  use depends exe to get dependencies     One benefit of deploying CoreUtils is that you ll additionally get a host of other programs that are helpful for scripting  Windows batch leaves a lot to be desired

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I disagree with the answers I found here   I use the following method entirely based on Windows nbsp XP capabilities to do a delay in a batch file   DELAY BAT    ECHO OFF REM DELAY seconds  REM GET ENDING SECOND FOR  F  TOKENS 1-3 DELIMS       A IN    TIME    DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100  S 1  C  100  ENDING  H 60 M  60 S  1  REM WAIT FOR SUCH A SECOND  WAIT FOR  F  TOKENS 1-3 DELIMS       A IN    TIME    DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100  S 1  C  100  CURRENT  H 60 M  60 S IF  CURRENT  LSS  ENDING  GOTO WAIT   You may also insert the day in the calculation so the method also works when the delay interval pass over midnight

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Over at Server Fault  a similar question was asked  and the solution there was   choice  d y  t 5  gt  nul

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ping -n X 127 0 0 1  gt  nul   Replace X with the number of seconds   1   For example  if you were to wait 10 seconds  replace X with 11  To wait 5 seconds  use 6   Read earlier answers for milliseconds

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This was tested on Windows nbsp XP SP3 and Windows nbsp 7 and uses CScript  I put in some safe guards to avoid del    prompting    q would be dangerous   Wait one second      sleepOrDelayExecution 1000   Wait 500 ms and then run stuff after   sleepOrDelayExecution 500 dir    s   sleepOrDelayExecution bat    echo off if   1        goto end if NOT  1 GTR 0 goto end setlocal set sleepfn   temp  sleep random  vbs  echo WScript Sleep  1   gt  sleepfn  if NOT  sleepfn        if NOT EXIST  sleepfn  goto end cscript  sleepfn   gt nul if NOT  sleepfn        if EXIST  sleepfn  del  sleepfn  for  f  usebackq tokens 1     i in   echo      DO   set params   j  params   end

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timeout  t  lt seconds gt   lt options gt    For example  to make the script perform a non-uninterruptible 2-second wait   timeout  t 2  nobreak  gt NUL   Which means the script will wait 2 seconds before continuing   By default  a keystroke will interrupt the timeout  so use the  nobreak switch if you don t want the user to be able to interrupt  cancel  the wait  Furthermore  the timeout will provide per-second notifications to notify the user how long is left to wait  this can be removed by piping the command to NUL   edit  As  martineau points out in the comments  the timeout command is only available on Windows 7 and above  Furthermore  the ping command uses less processor time than timeout  I still believe in using timeout where possible  though  as it is more readable than the ping  hack   Read more here

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You can get fancy by putting the PAUSE message in the title bar    ECHO off SET TITLETEXT Sleep TITLE  TITLETEXT  CALL  sleep 5 GOTO  END    Function Section  sleep ARG ECHO Pausing    FOR  l   a in    1 -1 1  DO  TITLE Script  TITLETEXT  -- time left     as amp PING exe -n 2 -w 1000 127 1 gt NUL  EXIT  B 0    End of script  END pause   this is EOF

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I faced a similar problem  but I just knocked up a very short C   console application to do the same thing  Just run MySleep exe 1000 - perhaps easier than downloading installing the whole resource kit    include  lt tchar h gt   include  lt stdio h gt   include  Windows h   int  tmain int argc   TCHAR  argv          if  argc    2                 tprintf  T  Sleeping for  s ms n    argv 1            Sleep  tstoi argv 1               else                tprintf  T  Wrong number of arguments  n               return 0

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I like Aacini s response   I added to it to handle the day and also enable it to handle centiseconds   TIME  outputs H MM SS CC     delay SET DELAYINPUT  1 SET  A DAYS DELAYINPUT 8640000 SET  A DELAYINPUT DELAYINPUT- DAYS 864000     Get ending centisecond  10 milliseconds  FOR  F  tokens 1-4 delims       A IN    TIME    DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100  S 1  C  100  X 1  D  100  ENDING   H 60 M  60 S  100 X DELAYINPUT SET  A DAYS DAYS ENDING 8640000 SET  A ENDING ENDING- DAYS 864000     Wait for such a centisecond  delay wait FOR  F  tokens 1-4 delims       A IN    TIME    DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100  S 1  C  100  X 1  D  100  CURRENT   H 60 M  60 S  100 X IF DEFINED LASTCURRENT IF  CURRENT  LSS  LASTCURRENT  SET  A DAYS DAYS-1 SET LASTCURRENT  CURRENT  IF  CURRENT  LSS  ENDING  GOTO delay wait IF  DAYS  GTR 0 GOTO delay wait GOTO  EOF

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You could use the Windows cscript WSH layer and this wait js JavaScript file   if  WScript Arguments Count      1      WScript Sleep WScript Arguments 0  1000   else     WScript Echo  Usage  cscript wait js seconds

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The best solution that should work on all Windows versions after Windows 2000 would be   timeout numbersofseconds  nobreak  gt  nul

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Or command line Python  for example  for 6 and a half seconds   python -c  import time time sleep 6 5

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The pathping exe can sleep less than second    echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion  echo  TIME   amp  pathping localhost -n -q 1 -p   1 2 gt  amp 1  gt  nul  amp  echo  TIME        gt  sleep 10 17 01 33 57 17 01 33 60   gt  sleep 20 17 03 56 54 17 03 56 58   gt  sleep 50 17 04 30 80 17 04 30 87   gt  sleep 100 17 07 06 12 17 07 06 25   gt  sleep 200 17 07 08 42 17 07 08 64   gt  sleep 500 17 07 11 05 17 07 11 57   gt  sleep 800 17 07 18 98 17 07 19 81   gt  sleep 1000 17 07 22 61 17 07 23 62   gt  sleep 1500 17 07 27 55 17 07 29 06

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SLEEP exe is included in most Resource Kits e g  The Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit which can be installed on Windows XP too   Usage   sleep      time-to-sleep-in-seconds         sleep  -m  time-to-sleep-in-milliseconds         sleep  -c  commited-memory ratio  1 -100

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There is a better way to sleep using ping  You ll want to ping an address that does not exist  so you can specify a timeout with millisecond precision  Luckily  such an address is defined in a standard  RFC 3330   and it is 192 0 2 x  This is not made-up  it really is an address with the sole purpose of not-existing  To be clear  this applies even in local networks   192 0 2 0 24 - This block is assigned as  quot TEST-NET quot  for use in documentation and example code   It is often used in conjunction with domain names example com or example net in vendor and protocol documentation   Addresses within this block should not appear on the public Internet   To sleep for 123 milliseconds  use ping 192 0 2 1 -n 1 -w 123  gt nul Update  As per the comments  there is also 127 255 255 255

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I am impressed with this one   http   www computerhope com batch htm 02  choice  n  c y  d y  t 5  gt  NUL   Technically  you re telling the choice command to accept only y  It defaults to y  to do so in 5 seconds  to draw no prompt  and to dump anything it does say to NUL  like null terminal on Linux

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I have been using this C  sleep program  It might be more convenient for you if C  is your preferred language   using System  using System Collections Generic  using System Linq  using System Text  using System Threading   namespace sleep       class Program               static void Main string   args                        if  args Length    1                                double time   Double Parse args 0                    Thread Sleep  int  time 1000                              else                               Console WriteLine  Usage  sleep  lt seconds gt  nExample  sleep 10

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Using the ping method as outlined is how I do it when I can t  or don t want to  add more executables or install any other software   You should be pinging something that isn t there  and using the -w flag so that it fails after that amount of time  not pinging something that is there  like localhost  -n times  This allows you to handle time less than a second  and I think it s slightly more accurate   e g    test that 1 1 1 1 isn t taken   ECHO Waiting 15 seconds  PING 1 1 1 1 -n 1 -w 15000  gt  NUL   or PING -n 15 -w 1000 127 1  gt NUL

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There are lots of ways to accomplish a  sleep  in cmd batch  My favourite one  TIMEOUT  NOBREAK 5  gt NUL 2 gt NUL  This will stop the console for 5 seconds  without any output  Most used  ping localhost -n 5  gt NUL 2 gt NUL  This will try to make a connection to localhost 5 times  Since it is hosted on your computer  it will always reach the host  so every second it will try the new every second  The -n flag indicates how many times the script will try the connection  In this case is 5  so it will last 5 seconds  Variants of the last one  ping 1 1 1 1 -n 5  gt nul  In this script there are some differences comparing it with the last one  This will not try to call localhost  Instead  it will try to connect to 1 1 1 1  a very fast website  The action will last 5 seconds only if you have an active internet connection  Else it will last approximately 15 to complete the action  I do not recommend using this method  ping 127 0 0 1 -n 5  gt nul  This is exactly the same as example 2  most used   Also  you can also use  ping    1  -n 5  gt nul  This instead  uses IPv6 s localhost version  There are lots of methods to perform this action  However  I prefer method 1 for Windows Vista and later versions and the most used method  method 2  for earlier versions of the OS

[python] Sleeping in a batch file

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