On Mon, Dec 24, 2001 at 06:40:55PM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> writes:
> > > Because the problem is a more general one, IMHO, in dealing with cron
> > > and sleeping machines.
> > 
> > One problem is that there is in cron no way to differentiate between
> > "run this if you can, otherwise never mind" and "run this as soon as
> > you can (after so and so), no matter what".
> 
> Well since it is pretty trivial to detect the difference in the
> situations, I'd dispute that. The only real question to me is how to
> specify it in the crontab syntax.

...after which extension it's no more the traditional crontab syntax, right?

I can see something like:
- 'h' for 'hard' (worth waking up) (the old traditional default)
- 's' for 'soft' (fail and forget if asleep)
- 'w' for 'wait for wakeup
	- 'w=n' for queuing up to 'n' instances, then start 's' behaviour
	- 'w=n,h', for queuing up to 'n', then worth waking up ('h')
somewhere in the crontab syntax.

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen