MidwestWebDeveloper.com: personal blog from a professional web developer. ramblings about code, etc.

If you have a script that requires a random pause delay --- for example, perhaps a web scraper --- here's a super simple way to do it.

usleep(rand(1000,3000));

The rand() function is being fed two numbers; the lowest number to generate, and the highest.

The usleep() function causes a script to pause for a specified number of microseconds.

So the code above is saying "randomly sleep between 1000-3000 microseconds", which means 1-3 actual seconds.

Simple, and effective!