Save the script I wrote in a file, turn it executable and execute it in a
terminal. Without any argument, it asks the kernel to write the buffered
data to disk every five second (you can change this default editing the
number 5 at the beginning of the script). With one argument, you can specify
a different period. It must be a valid argument to 'sleep': 2 or 2s for two
seconds, 5m for five minutes, etc. Any number of files can be given as
additional arguments: if so, only those files will be sync'ed.
Your "thoughtful guess" makes little sense: no data flows in the first pipe,
all your '-' are useless (most commands process the standard input by
default; also, the quotes are here useless), the sed substitution writes
parentheses that tr removed immediately after, the second awk prints $3 that
does not exist (the first awk only kept two fields) and, as I have already
told you many many times (the last time was one week ago:
https://trisquel.info/forum/another-uniq-u-feature-emerges#comment-150310),
sort -k 1 is the same as sort alone (you probably want sort -k 1,1).
followed by sync's responses
sync does not write anything (but errors). time outputs what you show.
without any actual conclusion of the script; the prompt hasn't reappeared
yet, even though there is no network activity. I used Ctrl+C to regain the
prompt.
The while loop is infinite. That is why I told you "Type Ctrl+C to
terminate" in
https://trisquel.info/forum/how-can-awk-substitute-paste#comment-150532
Where was sync saving the cached output during the 4-1/4 hours the script was
running ?
Please read
https://trisquel.info/forum/how-can-awk-substitute-paste#comment-150543
again. I suspect you do not understand the concept of a data buffer.
Without such a buffer, whenever something is to be written in a file, it
would be directly written onto the disk. Nevertheless, writing many times
small amounts of data onto the disk is slow. It is more efficient to
accumulate in RAM the data and to make one big write when a lot was
accumulated or when necessary. sync tells the kernel (which manages the
buffer) "it is necessary".
