SLEEP(3) Linux Programmer's Manual SLEEP(3)
NAME
sleep - sleep for a specified number of seconds
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
unsigned int sleep(unsigned int seconds);
DESCRIPTION
sleep() causes the calling thread to sleep either until the number of
real-time seconds specified in seconds have elapsed or until a signal
arrives which is not ignored.
RETURN VALUE
Zero if the requested time has elapsed, or the number of seconds left
to sleep, if the call was interrupted by a signal handler.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
+----------+---------------+-----------------------------+
|Interface | Attribute | Value |
+----------+---------------+-----------------------------+
|sleep() | Thread safety | MT-Unsafe sig:SIGCHLD/linux |
+----------+---------------+-----------------------------+
CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.
NOTES
On Linux, sleep() is implemented via nanosleep(2). See the
nanosleep(2) man page for a discussion of the clock used.
Portability notes
On some systems, sleep() may be implemented using alarm(2) and SIGALRM
(POSIX.1 permits this); mixing calls to alarm(2) and sleep() is a bad
idea.
Using longjmp(3) from a signal handler or modifying the handling of
SIGALRM while sleeping will cause undefined results.
SEE ALSO
sleep(1), alarm(2), nanosleep(2), signal(2), signal(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
GNU 2017-09-15 SLEEP(3)