Shell script spawning a process after a delay

Question

How can I spawn a process after a delay in a shell script? I want a command to start 60 seconds after the script starts, but I want to keep running the rest of the script withou

Answer 1

Alternative:

echo 'echo "A"' | at now + 1 min

If somehow the OS is not running at the specified time, the command will be executed as soon as it is available.

Answer 2

& starts a background job, so

sleep 60 && echo "A" &

Answer 3

Can't try it right now but

(sleep 60 && echo "A")&

should do the job

Answer 4

A slight expansion on the other answers is to wait for the backgrounded commands at the end of the script.

#!/bin/sh
# Echo A 60 seconds later, but without blocking the rest of the script

set -e

sleep 60 && echo "A" &
pid=$!

echo "B"
echo "C"

wait $pid