cron question / process queue

[Kent Johnson]

Steven W. Orr wrote:
> This is a classic question: How to run something on a periodic basis that 
> may take longer to execute than the interval between the next occurance. 
> Think of it not as a task that needs to be run at an interval so much as a 
> task that needs to be rescheduled after it finally completes.
> 
> If that description is appropriate for what you're doing then you might 
> want to consider not using cron in the first place. Look at using at(1) 
> instead. Your script that gets run at a certain time would then requeue 
> itself based on when it finished.

Thanks for the pointer. That is not quite my situation - I need to queue 
a different job when the first one finishes, and the job to queue (if 
any) depends on the date.

I ended up making a program that combines all three jobs and runs the 
correct ones in sequence based on the date.

Kent