Simple question has surprisingly high votes and views

Question

I don't know what is special about this question: Use sleep with minutes and seconds

This question is about the use of a basic shell function, can anyone explain to me what is difficult about a command like that (for which we only need read a little of the manual, like we say: RTFM!)?

This question has more views and more votes than some others that are more better and more instructive, so I didn't expect a success like that.

NB: I know this question won't be well received, but I really need explanation for this

Answer 1

Confounding factors^* aside, questions (and answers) like this tend to have long term popularity because people are trying to find a solution to the same problem. What you might think too obvious, or solved by man whatever, other people turn to Google (et al) as the first port of call.

Our goal is to answer questions so just telling them to look it up elsewhere isn't welcome. If that happens to you, flag it. Seriously, RTFM answers (and comments) have no place here.

That's not to say we're against people improving themselves. A really good answer won't stop at answering the question, it'll tell you how to answer questions like that in the future.

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^* Questions like this might be initially popular because people like low-hanging fruit. Some of the more simple things also tend to be solvable in a variety of ways and people like a good round of Code Golf and it's also a great way to learn advanced things you thought you already knew.

The people with a Gold in command-line are fine specimens of low fruit eaters :)