Function Reference
— Built-in Function: pause (seconds)

Suspend the execution of the program. If invoked without any arguments, Octave waits until you type a character. With a numeric argument, it pauses for the given number of seconds. For example, the following statement prints a message and then waits 5 seconds before clearing the screen.

          fprintf (stderr, "wait please...\n");
          pause (5);
          clc;