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Python sleep function | Python time sleep | Milliseconds (ms)

Python sleep function belongs to the time module of python. Python time sleep has a use for add dealy of program execution. You can stop time or halt the program for a Second or Milliseconds using time.sleep() function.

In this tutorial, you will learn about Python sleep function with sleep for Second and Millisecond’s examples.

Python sleep function Python time sleep | Milliseconds example

Python time sleep function only stops the execution of the current thread only, not the whole program or application.

Syntax

It’s a very simple syntax for python sleep function, you need just import time modules.

time.sleep(t)

Python sleep function Example 

Here is an example of a 5-second delay execution of the next line. You have to import time modules to use the sleep function.

import time

print("Start : Before sleep")
time.sleep(5)
print("End : After sleep")

Output: Here is gif, you can see delay of the print next line.

Python sleep function output

Another Example of Python sleep milliseconds – ms

You have seen the example of Python sleep in second, so how you will do Programming(code) in Python sleep milliseconds.

it’s easy, you may know 1 second = 1000 milliseconds. So you have to pass the value in sleep function like that – 1/1000 = .001. You can put a float number in the sleep() function.

Output for that very fast, you can see any break time between 2 print statements.

import time

print("Start: Before sleep")
time.sleep(.001)
print("End: After sleep")

Output: Start: Before sleep
End: After sleep

Example Sleep time with for loop 

For this example, we are running a “for loop” for per second and print the current time.

import time

for i in [1, 2, 3, 4]:
    print("After for %s seconds" % i, end='' + '\n')
    print("Current Time:", time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time())))
    time.sleep(i)

Output: 

After for 1 seconds
Current Time: Tue Oct 23 13:26:57 2018
After for 2 seconds
Current Time: Tue Oct 23 13:26:58 2018
After for 3 seconds
Current Time: Tue Oct 23 13:27:00 2018
After for 4 seconds
Current Time: Tue Oct 23 13:27:03 2018

QA: How to make a time delay in Python 3?

To make a dealy execution in a program or application you have to use the sleep() function in python. For it, you have to import a time module like this or the above example.

You can put a float argument for sub-second or milliseconds resolution.

from time import sleep
sleep(0.1) # Time in seconds.

Side notes: Do comment if you have any doubt or suggestion or examples.

Note: This example (Project) is developed in PyCharm 2018.2 (Community Edition)
JRE: 1.8.0
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o
macOS 10.13.6

Python 3.7

All Python time sleep function and sleep milliseconds examples in Python 3, so it may change its different from python 2 or upgraded versions.

1 thought on “Python sleep function | Python time sleep | Milliseconds (ms)”

  1. Hello,
    I’m sorry to bother you, but some things have to be said :
    Python time.sleep() can’t sleep for 1 ms (1/1000), even 10 ms is hard for it. And you really need to speak about jitter when you post ‘tutorial’ about fast timing … Python is nor real time, even on linux with kernel real time.
    Python is fantastic but don’t forget “it’s an high level language”, for a good manage with fast timer, you need a low level language like C (however you can call a C timer with a python script ;D I did it to generate a clock at 6 MHz on Raspberry)

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