Windows's Snipping tool can capture the screen, but sometimes I want to capture the screen after five seconds, such as taking an image being displayed by the webcam. (Run the script and smile at the camera, for example.)
How do I sleep for 5 seconds in a batch file?
One hack is to (mis)use the ping command:
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > nul
Explanation:
ping is a system utility that sends ping requests. ping is available on all versions of Windows.127.0.0.1 is the IP address of localhost. This IP address is guaranteed to always resolve, be reachable, and immediately respond to pings.-n 6 specifies that there are to be 6 pings. There is a 1s delay between each ping, so for a 5s delay you need to send 6 pings.> nul suppress the output of ping, by redirecting it to nul.