Re: Cron

[Tom <tb.nospam@comcast.net>]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 03:13:45AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 02:54, tb.nospam@comcast.net wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 09:47:07PM +0200, Stefan Waidele jun. wrote:
> > > Howell Evans wrote:
> > 
> > That's amazing; I would have expected cron to have information to know 
> > a priori when to wake up, rather than "polling"...
> 
> Waking up once a minute (which is a signal itself) to spend a 1/2
> second reading some 5 line (yes, yes, they can be longer) text 
> files is a *lot* simpler than having a signaling system for each 
> crontab file.

I figured that is the argument -- too much work for too little payoff -- 
and that's okay!

> 
> > At the least it could optimize out obviously simple cases...
> 
> Like what?
> 

Like the empty set.

Think about it: if a guy tells you to call him every hour, and a guy 
tells you to call him every fifteen minutes, do you think every minute 
about who to call?