how to use sleep command for parallel running of batch files

Sorry for this painful dumb question . I have 2 batch files where i have some commands to execute in batchfile1 and sleep for some time and then execute somecommands in batchfile2 and again batchfile2 will wait for some time and then again batchfile1..,so i am have below script

Batchfile1.bat

@echo off
echo helloworld
call Batchfile2.bat
GOTO END

Batchfile2.bat

@echo off
echo printing

Can any one suggest how to use sleep for this scenario, i am seeing different options sleep,timeout..etc. and which is one best to use in this scenario?

2 Answers

Well, SLEEP is not a standard Windows batch command, so that is out.

As long as the script need never be run on XP, then TIMEOUT is perfect. For example, to sleep 3 seconds:

timeout 3 /nobreak >nul

If you want the script to work on XP as well, then the standard hack is to use PING. It waits roughly 1 second between pings, so instruct it to ping one more than your desired number of seconds. So here is the example for a ~3 second delay:

ping -n 4 127.0.0.1 > nul

The scripts needn't necessarily be in separate files as CALL can call labels as well. This would do what you are describing:

@echo off
:start
call :script1
timeout 1 /nobreak >nul
call :script2
timeout 1 /nobreak >nul
goto :start
:script1
echo script1
goto :eof
:script2
echo script2
goto :eof

If you want the scripts to live in external files a similar approach works just as well:

@echo off
:start
call script1.bat
timeout 1 /nobreak >nul
call script2.bat
timeout 1 /nobreak >nul
goto :start