Please would you advise about an effective method to download a large number of files from EBI : https://github.com/eQTL-Catalogue/eQTL-Catalogue-resources/tree/master/tabix
We can use wget sequentially on each file. I have seen some information about using a python script : How to parallelize file downloads?
although there might be some complementary ways by using bash script or R ?
If you are not requiring R here, then the xargs command-line utility allows parallel execution. (I'm using the linux version in the findutils set of utilities. I believe this is also supported in the version of wget in git-bash. I don't know if the macos binary is installed by default nor if it includes this option, ymmv.)
For proof, I'll create a mywget script that prints the start time (and args) and then passes all arguments to wget.
(mywget)
echo "$(date) :: ${#}"
wget "${#}"
I also have a text file urllist with one URL per line (it's crafted so that I don't have to encode anything or worry about spaces, etc). (Because I'm using a personal remote server to benchmark this, and I don't that the slashdot-effect, I'll obfuscate the URLs here ...)
(urllist)
https://somedomain.com/quux0
https://somedomain.com/quux1
https://somedomain.com/quux2
First, no parallelization, simply consecutive (default). (The -a urllist is to read items from the file urllist instead of stdin. The -q is to be quiet, not required but certainly very helpful when doing things in parallel, since the typical verbose option has progress bars that will overlap each other.)
$ time xargs -a urllist ./mywget -q
Tue Feb 1 17:27:01 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux0
Tue Feb 1 17:27:10 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux1
Tue Feb 1 17:27:12 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux2
real 0m13.375s
user 0m0.210s
sys 0m0.958s
Second, adding -P 3 so that I run up to 3 simultaneous processes. The -n1 is required so that each call to ./mywget gets only one URL. You can adjust this if you want a single call to download multiple files consecutively.
$ time xargs -n1 -P3 -a urllist ./mywget -q
Tue Feb 1 17:27:46 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux0
Tue Feb 1 17:27:46 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux1
Tue Feb 1 17:27:46 EST 2022 :: -q https://somedomain.com/quux2
real 0m13.088s
user 0m0.272s
sys 0m1.664s
In this case, as BenBolker suggested in a comment, parallel download saved me nothing, it still took 13 seconds. However, you can see that in the first block, they started sequentially with 9 seconds and 2 seconds in between each of the three downloads. (We can infer that the first file is much larger, taking 9 seconds, and the second file took about 2 seconds.) In the second block, all three started at the same time.
(Side note: this doesn't require a shell script at all; you can use R's system or the processx::run functions to call xargs -n1 -P3 wget -q with a text file of URLs that you create in R. So you can still do this comfortably from the warmth of your R console.)
I had a similar task and my approach was the following:
I have used python, redis and supervisord.
I have pushed to a redis list all the paths/urls of the files i needed (i just created a small py script to read my csv and push it to a Redis queue/list.)
then i have created another py script to read (pull) one item from the redis list and download it.
using supervisord, i just launched 10 paralel py files that were pulling data from redis (file paths) and downloading the files.
It might be too complicated for you, but this solution is very scalable, can use multiple servers etc.
Thank you all. I have investigated a few other ways to do it :
#!/bin/bash
############################
while read file; do
wget ${file} &
done < files.txt
###########################
while read file; do
wget ${file} -b
done < files.txt
##########################
cat files.txt | xargs -n 1 -P 10 wget -q
I'm leveraging Zabbix with a custom low-level-discovery that discovers a REST/API endpoint using Python. When the polling is on, the CPU utilization goes through the roof. All the CPU usage is caused by setroubleshootd as show in top:
top - 13:51:56 up 15:33, 1 user, load average: 1.52, 1.43, 1.37
Tasks: 127 total, 3 running, 124 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 35.8 us, 6.7 sy, 0.0 ni, 57.3 id, 0.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.2 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 8010508 total, 6211020 free, 397104 used, 1402384 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 1679356 total, 1679356 free, 0 used. 6852016 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
7986 setroub+ 20 0 424072 130856 11548 R 77.4 1.6 7:12.16
Zabbix calls the agent and requests to execute a "UserParameter" which is shorthand for a script. That script is a bash file that calls my python script. and the call looks like this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/bin/python /etc/zabbix/externalscripts/discovery.py $1 $2 $3 $4 $5
When zabbix calls the script, it passes the unique filters, like a server ID or network card ID, as one of the arguments. The python script opens up an https session using requests, leveraging a bearer token if the token file exists. If the token file doesn't exist it creates it.
The script works fine and does everything it is supposed to but setroubleshoot is rebooting a slew of issues, specifically around file folder access. The huge number of setroubleshootd responses is causing the CPU to go nuts. Here is an example of the error:
python: SELinux is preventing /usr/bin/python2.7 from create access on the file 7WMXFl.
The file name is random and changes with every execution. I've tried adding an exception using the selinux tools such as:
ausearch -c 'python' --raw | audit2allow -M my-python
But since the file name is random, the errors persist. I've tried uninstalling setroubleshootd, selinux just reinstalls it. Unfortunately, I need to run enforcing mode, so dropping to permissive or disabling are not options.
I've tried changing so that I'm not running a bash script, that zabbix calls the python script directly, or declaring shebang /usr/bin/python, but passing arguments doesn't seem to work properly. I get an error stating the $1 $2... are unknown arguments.
At a loss at this point. It is running, but I'd really like to get the CPU usage down as 60% of 4 cores is unreasonable for 30-40 HTTPS calls.
I ended up writing an SEModule for this that allows the zabbix user write access to the /tmp folder where these files are being created and managed. CPU usage dropped from 75% to 2%. #NailedIt
$>sudo ausearch -m avc | grep zabbix | grep denied | audit2allow -m zabbixallow > my_script.te
$>checkmodule -M -m -o zabbixallow.mod my_script.te
$>semodule_package -o zabbixallow.pp -m zabbixallow.mod
$>sudo semodule -i zabbixallow.pp
Hopefully this helps someone else if they run across this issue.
External scripts will have to complete within your timeout value, this sounds like it's too big for that. You could convert it to zabbix_sender and schedule it via cron. Then it's just a script with performance problems.
On Oracle Solaris 11 console when ps -ef | grep java command is issued I can see running some java process PID, which was started on other console window and then it (console window) was closed (.jar application output then was visible). Is it some way to grab again that application output without restarting .jar file?
Application was started like this (as a root user):
java -jar SomeFile.jar &
Write output to file is not an option in this case.
Yes, you can do that, but it involves some mad skills with gdb. Here is how to do that in Linux and I believe you can do the same in Solaris (since it has gdb and it has all needed system calls I'm gonna use further).
There are 3 file descriptors for standard streams:
stdin: 0
stdout: 1
stderr: 2
You are interested in stdout and stderr (both are console output), so you need file descriptors with numbers 1 and 2, just keep it in mind.
Now I'm gonna show you how to do what you ask for "okular" application (instead of your "java" application) for stderr stream.
Run "okular" in terminal, like this:
$ okular &
and then close this terminal. This is just to simulate your situation.
Open another terminal
Look for "okular" process:
$ ps aux | grep okular
Output:
joe 27599 2.2 0.9 515644 73944 ? S 23:46 0:00 okular
So "okular" PID is 27599.
Look for open file descriptors of "okular" process:
$ ls -l /proc/27599/fd
Output:
lrwx------ 1 joe joe 64 Feb 18 23:46 0 -> /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 joe joe 64 Feb 18 23:46 1 -> /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 joe joe 64 Feb 18 23:46 2 -> /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
You see that all 3 streams are deleted.
Now let's attach to our process with gdb:
$ gdb -p 27599 /usr/bin/okular
Inside of gdb perform next operations:
(gdb) p close(2)
(gdb) p creat("/tmp/okular_2", 0600)
(gdb) detach
(gdb) quit
Here we invoked 2 system calls:
close(), to close file for stderr stream of our process
creat(), to create new file for stderr stream of our process
p is gdb command, it prints (in our case) system calls return values.
Now all new stderr output of our process will be appended to text file /tmp/okular_2. We can read it constantly this way:
$ tail -f /tmp/okular_2
Conclusion
Ok, that's it, we revived stderr stream. You can do the same for stdout stream, the only difference is that you need to call "close(1)" instead of "close(2)" in gdb. Also, in your case be sure to replace all "okular" words with your "java" word.
The most of answer was inspired by this article.
If you need to revive stdin stream, you can attach it to pipe (FIFO) file, see details here.
Yes, it is possible to snoop any process output with Solaris native tools.
One way would be using dtrace which allows tracing processes even when they are already grabbed by a debugger or similar tool.
This dtrace script will display a given process stdout:
#!/bin/ksh
pid=$1
dtrace -qn "syscall::write:entry /pid == $pid && arg0 == 1 /
{ printf(\"%s\",copyinstr(arg1)); }"
You should should pass the process id of the java application to trace as its first argument, eg. $(pgrep -f "java -jar SomeFile.jar").
Replace arg0 == 1 by arg0 == 2 if you want to trace stderr vs stdin.
Should you want to see non displayable characters (in octal), you might use this slightly modified version:
#!/bin/ksh
pid=$1
dtrace -qn "syscall::write:entry /pid == $pid && arg0 == 1 /
{ printf(\"%s\",copyinstr(arg1)); }" | od -c
Another native way is to use the truss command. The following script will show all writes from your process to any file descriptors, and will include a full detailed trace for both stdout and stderr (3799 is your target process pid):
truss -w1,2 -t write -p 3799
dtrace:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/819-5488/gcgkk.html
truss:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36870/truss-1.html#scrolltoc
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 > nul
#ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1% -w 1000> 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 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) > 1 else 1)
The timeout command is available from Windows Vista onwards:
c:\> 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:\>echo 1 | timeout /t 1 /nobreak
ERROR: Input redirection is not supported, exiting the process immediately.
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 > NUL
or
PING -n 15 -w 1000 127.1 >NUL
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)
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%)
I disagree with the answers I found here.
I use the following method entirely based on Windows 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.
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 <tchar.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#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;
}
You can use ping:
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 11 -w 1000 >nul: 2>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 control how often packets are sent, it's to ensure that you wait no more than some time in the event that there are network problems. There are unlikely to be problems if you're pinging 127.0.0.1 so this is probably moot.
The ping command on its own will normally send one packet per second. This is not actually documented in the Windows docs but it appears to follow the same rules as the Linux version (where it is documented).
Over at Server Fault, a similar question was asked, and the solution there was:
choice /d y /t 5 > nul
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");
Depending on your compatibility needs, either use ping:
ping -n <numberofseconds+1> localhost >nul 2>&1
e.g. to wait 5 seconds, use
ping -n 6 localhost >nul 2>&1
or on Windows 7 or later use timeout:
timeout 6 >nul
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 "TEST-NET" 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 >nul
Update: As per the comments, there is also 127.255.255.255.
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).
timeout /t <seconds> <options>
For example, to make the script perform a non-uninterruptible 2-second wait:
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >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.
Just put this in your batch file where you want the wait.
#ping 127.0.0.1 -n 11 -w 1000 > null
In Notepad, write:
#echo off
set /a WAITTIME=%1+1
PING 127.0.0.1 -n %WAITTIME% > nul
goto:eof
Now save as wait.bat in the folder C:\WINDOWS\System32,
then whenever you want to wait, use:
CALL WAIT.bat <whole number of seconds without quotes>
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!
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.
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
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 <seconds>\nExample: sleep 10");
}
}
}
}
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 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.
Or command line Python, for example, for 6 and a half seconds:
python -c "import time;time.sleep(6.5)"
The best solution that should work on all Windows versions after Windows 2000 would be:
timeout numbersofseconds /nobreak > nul
There are lots of ways to accomplish a 'sleep' in cmd/batch:
My favourite one:
TIMEOUT /NOBREAK 5 >NUL 2>NUL
This will stop the console for 5 seconds, without any output.
Most used:
ping localhost -n 5 >NUL 2>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 >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 >nul
This is exactly the same as example 2 (most used). Also, you can also use:
ping [::1] -n 5 >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.
The pathping.exe can sleep less than second.
#echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
echo !TIME! & pathping localhost -n -q 1 -p %~1 2>&1 > nul & echo !TIME!
.
> sleep 10
17:01:33,57
17:01:33,60
> sleep 20
17:03:56,54
17:03:56,58
> sleep 50
17:04:30,80
17:04:30,87
> sleep 100
17:07:06,12
17:07:06,25
> sleep 200
17:07:08,42
17:07:08,64
> sleep 500
17:07:11,05
17:07:11,57
> sleep 800
17:07:18,98
17:07:19,81
> sleep 1000
17:07:22,61
17:07:23,62
> sleep 1500
17:07:27,55
17:07:29,06
I am impressed with this one:
http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm#02
choice /n /c y /d y /t 5 > 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).
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) >"%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 ms = 1 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) >"%cd%\sleeper.vbs"
start /WAIT "" "%cd%\sleeper.vbs" "1000"
del /f /q "%cd%\sleeper.vbs"
Just for fun, if you have Node.js installed, you can use
node -e 'setTimeout(a => a, 5000)'
to sleep for 5 seconds. It works on a Mac with Node v12.14.0.
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&PING.exe -n 2 -w 1000 127.1>NUL)
EXIT /B 0
:: End of script
:END
pause
::this is EOF
This was tested on Windows XP SP3 and Windows 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) >%sleepfn%
if NOT %sleepfn% == "" if NOT EXIST %sleepfn% goto end
cscript %sleepfn% >nul
if NOT %sleepfn% == "" if EXIST %sleepfn% del %sleepfn%
for /f "usebackq tokens=1*" %%i in (`echo %*`) DO # set params=%%j
%params%
:end
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).