> the process isn't allocated any CPU time until the timer expires. Almost so. But the "sleep" functions are interruptible, so if a process (the "sleep" command) is somehow signaled, it will wake up prematurely, and will have to either put itself back to sleep (for the remaining unslept time) or terminate, whatever the implementation is. So in the former case, there is some CPU still consumed (and that would depend on how often the signal arrives), and in the former case, the actual slept time can be quite inaccurate (from what you think it should have been).
Signaling with scripts can be quite tricky as the signal can propagate to the entire process group, rather than a single process (depending on which process the signal was sent to). Using cron (as others suggested) gives you a time accuracy up to a second (give or take), but then again it depends on the load of the system, and may drift rather significantly. My $.02, Anton Lavrentiev Contractor NIH/NLM/NCBI -- Problem reports: https://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: https://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: https://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: https://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
