I came across a few scripts which uses timeout = 5 and a few other scripts which uses pause 5 to add a delay of 5 seconds. I would like to know and understand the difference between these two flavors.
Timeout is used generally with wait* commands. Wait* commands wait for the specific input until the 'timeout' seconds. Wait will return early with success, if it receives required input.
Pause is mandatory pause in the execution. Pause stops the execution of the script for specified seconds.