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, 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.
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)