Re: Sequential background tasks

[T <mlist4suntong@yahoo.com>]

On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:10:43 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:

>> I find that in many cases I need my background tasks to be executed in
>> sequence. Ie, I need background task-b to start right after background
>> task-a has properly started.
>> 
>> So far I haven't found a good way to do it. I used
>> 
>>  task-a & sleep 2; task-b &
>> 
>> but that 'sleep 2' has changed to 'sleep 5' and still sometimes task-b
>> starts before task-a. I can raise the wait time, but it means that
>> task-b would normally start too late...
>> 
>> Any good way?
> 
> "background" and "in sequence" are a bit (no, a *lot*) contradictory.

yeah, so true. 

hi, thanks everyone who replied.

> What you probably want is a *sequence* and put *it* in the background.
> This, maybe:
> 
>   (task-a && sleep 2 && task-b) &

or as Cameron suggested

{ task-a ; task-b ; } &

to avoid needlessly forking. 

This is the common theme for all the answers so far. But the problem is
that my background tasks are real background tasks, eg. emacs and tk
scripts, that they'd not finish and return. 

So I guess that I have to rely on longer sleeping then?