> I don't think this functionality belongs in dash. For example, I > find that the "sleep" command in > >> Example of a simple cronjob which runs with a random delay of >> 0 ~ 327 seconds (to prevent network peaks of all the machines): >> >> */30 * * * * sleep $(($RANDOM/100)) && do_something_network_related > > is better written (more portably and more intuitively) as > > sleep $(awk 'BEGIN {srand(); printf "%d\n", rand()*327}') > > or > > awk 'BEGIN { srand(); system("sleep " int(rand() * 327)) }' > > even though this is a little longer.
nice idea... */30 * * * * perl -e "sleep rand(327)"; do_something_network_related for the ones that like perl :-) I think that is "dash" is supposed to replace bash, it should implement $RANDOM... but this is only my personal opinion :-) > On the other hand, I would definitely like a way for users to be able > to easily choose a different shell to be used by cron, so they would > be less at the mercy of the cruel sysadmin. What do you think? If you put: SHELL=/bin/something at the begining of your crontab, all the lines will be run with your prefered shell. Thanks, Pedro -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org