PowerShell’s Start-Sleep Cmdlet
Most scripting languages have the ability to pause, in the case of PowerShell look for a built-in cmdlet called Start-Sleep. However, I ask myself, ‘Do I really need to pause a script?’ The answer often comes back, ‘Windows services have built-in controls to wait, thus I rarely need the extra and explicit PowerShell Start-Sleep’.
Topics for PowerShell Start-Sleep
- Example 1: PowerShell Start-Sleep
- Example 2: Start-Sleep with a PowerShell Job
- Further Research of PowerShell’s Start-Sleep
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Example 1: PowerShell Start-Sleep
Here is a simple example where a PowerShell script pauses between starting and stopping a Windows service.
# Start-Sleep Example
Stop-Service Spooler -force
Start-Sleep -s 10
Start-Service Spooler
Get-Service Spooler
Note 1: I am aware that we could simply use:
Restart-Service Spooler -force
Note 2: Observe how the timing parameter (-s) proceeds its numeric value (10).
This example does highlight that Start-Sleep may be a waste of time, and may make your script unnecessarily complex. However, if we purely wanted to test Start-Sleep then this example would illustrate the simplicity of the syntax.
Example 2: Start-Sleep with a PowerShell Job
Here is a more realistic example where Start-Sleep enables a script to wait while a ‘Job’ completes.
$job = Start-Job {$i=0; $c=0; while (1) {
Write-Progress Activity "Step $i"; $i++; Start-Sleep -sec 1 }}
while ($job.State -eq ‘Running’ -And $c -lt 5) {
$c++;
$progress=$job.ChildJobs[0].progress;
$progress | %{$_.StatusDescription};
$progress.Clear(); Start-Sleep 1 }
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Further Research of PowerShell’s Start-Sleep
I’m hoping that the simple example above will give you ideas. To see what’s possible it’s well worth examining Start-Sleep’s properties.
Start-Sleep Parameters
# Research PowerShell’s Start-Sleep’s Parameters
Clear-Host
Get-Help Start-Sleep -full
Note 3: All this help files reveals is how we can control the length of the pause with -s (seconds) or maybe -m (milliseconds).
Start-Sleep Properties
# Research PowerShell’s Start-Sleep Properties
Start-Sleep | Get-Member
Note 4: Start-Sleep does not have any properties! For once PowerShell’s Get-Member cannot return any properties or methods for this cmdlet.
Start-Sleep Alias – Sleep
If you prefer, just use plain ‘Sleep’; this works because PowerShell has a built-in alias called Sleep.
Another Sleep Example
In this instance I wanted to highlight how Import-Module worked, specifically to count the modules before and after the import.
Clear-Host
Get-Module ; "Before " +(Get-Module).count
Start-Sleep -s 10
Import-Module PSRemoteRegistry
Write-Host `n"– After import –" `n
Get-Module ; "After" +(Get-Module).count
Note 5: You would need to have installed a module called PSRemoteRegistry for this to work!
Summary of Windows PowerShell Start-Sleep Cmdlet
In terms of efficiency, the crucial question is do we need Start-Sleep at all? Once you decide that you need to pause a script, then the syntax is straightforward.
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See more PowerShell examples of process and service
• PowerShell Home • Get-Process • Stop-Process • PowerShell Start-Process • Set-Service
• Get-Service • Start-Service • Stop-Service • Restart-Service • Free WMI Monitor
• PowerShell Start-Sleep • Get-WmiObject win32_service • Windows PowerShell
Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.
