Package: at
Version: 3.1.13-1
at(1)'s man page lacks documentation of an edge case where it is envoked with
an explicit date and time in the past.
For example, if a person at 8pm sends a job to at mistakingly asking it to run
at "18:00 today" (ie 6pm that day, or two hours ago):
echo "this-job" | at "18:00 today"
This job is run nearly immediately. A check of the source code, and an
inadvertent run like that of the above example, proved that behavior.
While atd(8)'s behavior isn't bad, it is surprising; unfortunately, it's also
not documented.
The proposed fix to the at.1 manual page is to take the following paragraph:
For example, to run a job at 4pm three days from now, you would do at
4pm + 3 days, to run a job at 10:00am on July 31, you would do at 10am
Jul 31 and to run a job at 1am tomorrow, you would do at 1am tomorrow.
and add:
If you specify a job to absolutely run at a specific time and date in
the past, the job will run as soon as possible. For example, if it is
8pm and you do a "at 6pm today", it will run more likely at 8:05pm.
--
Kelly Price
DP Programmer, Application Services, IT Group
Maryland Transit Administration
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