Question on at and atq commands

[Brian Kelsay]

You caught my menaing about the "job" disappearing from the at file.

I would think that replacing at w/ some simple functionality in cron would eliminate the need for 2 
programs.  I would think that a purist would like removing unneeded cruft.  Anyone who still wanted 
at would be welcome to install it as well.

Now all cron needs is a mail reading program. ;-) 

Brian Kelsay

>>> "John Geiger" <John.Geiger at FossTraining.com> 02/12/04 12:26PM >>>
 
>>> So a one time backup job may be put here or a scheduled reboot?  After the job completes with 
at does it just disappear?  Or could you dredge it up and use it again at some later date? <<<

With at, the job would be run only for the time specified. If you were running a shell script or a 
program, that program would still exist but the 'job' per se is gone forever. Again, at was 
designed for 'ad hoc' types of running i.e., run once.
	
>>>For what Jason commented, couldn't they add a character like the @ that causes cron to run once 
and then comment out the line? <<< 

Unix 'purists' (and I am not one believe me) would argue that is why you have at as well as cron .

	John Geiger