> On May 3, 2023, at 1:32 PM, Todd C. Miller <mill...@openbsd.org> wrote:
>
> Crontab supports things like "*/20" in the minutes column to run
> every 20 minutes. For example, given:
>
> */20 * * * * echo I am right on time
>
> The job above would run at 0, 20, and 40 minutes of every hours.
>
> job@ asked whether we could support a random offset so that jobs
> would not always start at the same time, but still use the same
> period (in this example every 20 minutes). This turns out to
> be fairly simple.
>
> Below is a small diff to support step intervals with a random offset.
> The syntax adds a '~' after the step value. For example:
>
> */~20 * * * * echo mix it up a bit
>
> will still run every 20 minutes but the initial run will be some
> time between 0-19 minutes after the hour (inclusive). Like the
> existing random support, the starting offset for an entry is chosen
> when the crontab file is first loaded and remains the same unless
> the crontab file is modified (and reloaded).
>
> The man page bits are from job@
>
> Opinions? Does the proposed syntax seem OK?
>
> - todd
Any chance the syntax could be:
~/20 * * * * command
To align with how ~ is used currently.
