Will Macs go to sleep if there's no activity even if it's in the middle of some operation?

A relatively new Mac user here and I was curious if Macs go to sleep after a period of inactivity even if it's in the middle of some operation, such as copying lots of files. IIRC, on PC, I could be start moving a whole bunch of files from my SD card to my SSD (which could take more than 30 minutes) and just go for dinner while the operation finished. The computer wouldn't go to sleep even though the computer was "inactive". Last time I did this on Mac, it seemed like the machine went to sleep and the procedure was incomplete. I could be mistaken - if this is the case I apologize for the unnecessary post! But, if this is the case (i.e., macs do go to sleep even when it's in the middle of some kind of computer operation) is there a way to not make the machine go to sleep?