sleep - Pausing & Periodic Scheduling

The sleep module enhances the standard sleep command by supporting human-readable time formats and offering integrated scheduling for repeating tasks.

When to Activate

• When a script needs to pause for a duration like 5m or 1h30m.
• When creating a periodic "beacon" that outputs timestamps.
• When scheduling a command to run at regular intervals (polling, backups, tests).

Core Principles & Rules

• Time Units: Use s, m, h, d for intuitive duration specification.
• Combined Command: Pause then immediately execute a command using x sleep <time> <command>.
• Scheduled Loops: Use schd for controlled repeating tasks, with optional iteration limits (-n).

Patterns & Examples

Delay Script

# Pause for 1 minute then continue
x sleep 1m

Periodic Timestamp (Beacon)

# Output current timestamp every 5 seconds
x sleep beacon 5s

Repeating Task

# Run a backup script every hour, infinitely
x sleep schd -i 1h -- ./backup.sh

Limited Repeating Task

# Run a test command every 10 seconds, for 5 iterations
x sleep schd -i 10s -n 5 -- make test

Checklist

• Confirm the delay duration and its units.
• Verify if the task should repeat infinitely or a fixed number of times.
• Ensure the command to be scheduled is correctly provided after the -- separator.