AutoHotkey Community

[Stefan]

Hi Chris,

i searched the AHK help for an simple cron syntax.
Is there any?



Like:
AHKCron, <Minute> <Hour> <Day> <Month> <Day of Week> <Command line>

e.g.
AHKCron, 0 2 * 1-11 1-5 MsgBox, Coffee break


---
or e.g.

# start a backup every tuesday at midnight
AHKCron 0 0 * * 3 c:\tests\backup.bat



Is there such a simple syntax, i need a keyword to find this in the help.

Is this not, i wanna suggest this as new feature to use AHK as CRON.
I think about an "AHKCron.ahk" script file, containing those AHKCron commands.

THX
Stefan
_________________
Stefan

This post was created with the kindly help of http://dict.leo.org/ and remember: “Allways look on the bright side of Life”

[Nemroth]

I'm OK with this proposition.

Perhaps it would be better to have :

AHKCron, Day, Month, Year, Hour, Minute, Seconds, Command line

and/or

AHKCron, +Minutes, Command line

where "+Minutes" stand for the number of minutes after the lauch of the ahk script or of the compiled exe script.

[Chris]

That's on the to-do list as "Add scheduling by extending SetTimer, e.g. daily at a certain time, etc."

I have raised its priority and made a note of your ideas for when the time comes. Thanks.

In the meantime, you could use the built-in date-time math along with SetTimer to schedule something:

[Nemroth]

Very interesting code.
I'll keep waiting for a Cron command in AHK in the future.
Thanks Chris.

[Stefan]

Thanks for the answer.
Thanks for raised its priority too.


-----------------------------------------------.
Nemroth wrotes:
> Perhaps it would be better to have :
> AHKCron, Day, Month, Year, Hour, Minute, Seconds, Command line

No, i suggest highly to use the well famliliar and well testet UNIX syntax of cron.
AHKCron <Minute> <Hour> <Day_of_the_Month> <Month_of_the_Year> <Day_of_the_Week> <command>

* * * * *
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | +---- Day of the Week (range: 1-7, 1 standing for Monday)
| | | +------ Month of the Year (range: 1-12)
| | +-------- Day of the Month (range: 1-31)
| +---------- Hour (range: 0-23)
+------------ Minute (range: 0-59)

<command> could be an *.exe, *.com, *.bat, *cmd, *.vbs, *.ahk ... ,
or directly an AHK command or an AHK variable who will be found
as a part of a bigger script at the end of the AHKCron.ahk file.

Click here for syntax and examples
If you need more details, let me here pls!!!

-----------------------------------------------

Further more i suggest additional commands:

1) The char +, who means execute <command> 'n' minutes or seconds
or days after windows start, depending on the position of the '+' in
command line. (THX Nemroth for this very nice idea)

2) a sixt row * for the year (like nnCron)

3) a sevent row for this following chars:
   char ?, who means execute <command> during windows start.
    char #, who means execute <command> on windows shutdown (not on cancling the script).


-----------------------------------------------

> In the meantime,
Thanks for pointing me to this script.
_________________
Stefan

This post was created with the kindly help of http://dict.leo.org/ and remember: “Allways look on the bright side of Life”

[savage]

[Wingfat]

I am useing the built in Windows Scheduler myself. I can get it to launch complied AHK scripts when I need them to. Built in function would be nice, but in essence not very necessary for most users applications.

[robertus]

maybe you should think about introducing a bit more than just cron.
I am familiar with a shareware called "Macro Angel" which has good scheduling features (but some of the macro stuff sucks) - when you worked with that you know there is more to it than just a cron-command:
for example what should happen to the script when it failed - should it be rescheduled for next week, or disabled?

Also the scheduler should log when the script was execute in the past (plus results?). for example: a script that is due every monday and you turn on your computer and it is tuesday and the day before you had a holiday. There should be a feature saying: test if the script is/was due. if it is overdue:
a.) run it right away and reschedule it for next monday (tuesday?)
b.) ask what to do
c.) don't bother just wait for next monday

[Chris]

Thanks for the ideas. I've made a note to review them again when the time comes to work on this feature.

[Guest]

The time should be in the already establisted format used by other commands...

The elements of the YYYYMMDDHH24MISS format are:

YYYY The 4-digit year
MM The 2-digit month (01-12)
DD The 2-digit day of the month (01-31)
HH24 The 2-digit hour in 24-hour format (00-23) e.g. 09 is 9am, 21 is 9pm
MI The 2-digit minutes (00-59)
SS The 2-digit seconds (00-59)

If only a partial string is given for YYYYMMDDHH24MISS (e.g. 200403), any remaining element that has been omitted will be supplied with the following default values:

MM: Month 01
DD: Day 01
HH24: Hour 00
MI: Minute 00
SS: Second 00

The built-in variable A_Now contains the current local time in the above format.

[Stefan]

Hi Chris,
are there any news about an intern cron functionality?
This would be quit simpler then Timer / Sleep / IFs

[Chris]

Yes, it's still planned. I consider scheduling to be a pretty big benefit that would be used by quite a few people.

[tonne]

FYI
I am currently working on a script offering cron capabilities.
It will be packeted in two parts: a library and a standalone interface using the library.
I hope the library will be ready in the end of this week (ultimo august 07 ). The interface some weeks later.

EDIT:
The first beta version is out: http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=143772#143772
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