How to make a batch file wait for fractions of a second? [duplicate]

Question

I want to make a batch file wait for 0.5 or 0.25 seconds.
I have already tried timeout /t 0.5 but it is not working.

It is something like:
@echo off color a cls :top echo %random% timeout /t 0.5 echo %random% goto top

Edit : Thanks for the answers y'all

Answer 1

Try this: ping 127.0.0.1 -n 1 -w 500> nul 500 is the time in ms.

EDIT:

As rojo posted in the comments this won't work as expected for 250ms:

ping used this way pauses a minimum of 500ms. Using any value lower than 500 still results in a half second pause

Answer 2

TIMEOUT only works in increments of whole seconds.

There are other third-party "sleep" executables you can download.

Alternatively, you could use the Sleep method in VBScript. It accepts values as milliseconds. Here is a simple example (save it to SLEEP.VBS or whatever name you want):

ms = WScript.Arguments(0)
WScript.Sleep ms

Then, in your batch file call it like this for a 0.5 second delay:

CSCRIPT SLEEP.VBS 500