Bash timeframe

Sloth77 · 12-29-2020, 09:59 PM

.

What’s the best way to specify a time and day for which to defer a command?

So if I want to defer any command that comes in between 5 and 6pm Sunday through Thursday….I know I need to sleep for 60m but how do I specify the day/time for when to start and end the deferment? Thank you

scasey · 12-30-2020, 12:04 AM

man at
Or maybe
man cron

Tho I’ll admit that “command that comes in” isn’t at all clear...

Sloth77 · 12-30-2020, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scasey

man at
Or maybe
man cron

Tho I’ll admit that “command that comes in” isn’t at all clear...

I had thought about Cron but the issue with this are alerts won’t always come in between 5-6pm, but if they do I need the bash file to NOT execute until 6:01pm.

I’m only familiar with how to use cron to perform a function at a certain time.

scasey · 12-30-2020, 02:38 AM

Ah. Do you already have a script that processes the alerts? Use at (man at) inside that script to control when to execute the processing.

Hard to be mor specific without more details.

Sloth77 · 12-30-2020, 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scasey

Ah. Do you already have a script that processes the alerts? Use at (man at) inside that script to control when to execute the processing.

Hard to be mor specific without more details.

Yes that is correct. I have a script that does everything it is supposed to do 24/7 for incoming alerts. Now I just need to add in a couple lines to still accept incoming alerts between 5 and 6pm each day but defer the reaction to those alerts till 6:01pm each day.

Guttorm · 12-30-2020, 06:58 AM

Hi

You could use the at command - at '16:01pm'

Another option is to just calculate the number of seconds to sleep. Using timestamps (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC) and the date command, it's very easy to calculate.

Code:

ts1=$(date '+%s')
ts2=$(date -d '6:01pm' '+%s')
seconds=$(($ts2-$ts1))
sleep $seconds && ...

Both the at command and date use today as default.

MadeInGermany · 12-31-2020, 04:03 AM

I think the date command plus some conditions are needed here. No crontab or at.
Set multiple variables by one date command

Code:

eval $(date +"hour=%H dow=%u")
if
  [ $hour -ge 17 -a $hour -le 18 ] &&
  [ $dow -le 4 ] 
then
  sleep 3600
fi

Consult

Code:

man date

for values and parameters.

There might be a difficulty with a leading 0 being interpreted as octal number.

pan64 · 12-31-2020, 06:36 AM

probably a flag? You will stop "the reaction to those alerts" when it was set and unset it at 6:00. I still do not understand when and how should it be set.

ondoho · 12-31-2020, 07:11 AM

So the script must start at 5am and must execute its final command after 6am, correct?
And you already know how to start it at 5am, correct?
The rest should be easy, maybe post #6.
Also, for added code golf: you can use the $SECONDS variable instead of date. 'man bash'