How to limit number of threads/sub-processes used in a function in bash

Question

My question is how change this code so it will use only 4 threads/sub-processes?

TESTS=\"a b c d e\"

for f in $TESTS; do
  t=$[ ( $RANDOM % 5 )  + 1 ]
  sl         


        

Answer 1

This tested script runs 5 jobs at a time and will restart a new job as soon as it does (due to the kill of the sleep 10.9 when we get a SIGCHLD. A simpler version of this could use direct polling (change the sleep 10.9 to sleep 1 and get rid of the trap).

#!/usr/bin/bash

set -o monitor
trap "pkill -P $$ -f 'sleep 10\.9' >&/dev/null" SIGCHLD

totaljobs=15
numjobs=5
worktime=10
curjobs=0
declare -A pidlist

dojob()
{
  slot=$1
  time=$(echo "$RANDOM * 10 / 32768" | bc -l)
  echo Starting job $slot with args $time
  sleep $time &
  pidlist[$slot]=`jobs -p %%`
  curjobs=$(($curjobs + 1))
  totaljobs=$(($totaljobs - 1))
}

# start
while [ $curjobs -lt $numjobs -a $totaljobs -gt 0 ]
 do
  dojob $curjobs
 done

# Poll for jobs to die, restarting while we have them
while [ $totaljobs -gt 0 ]
 do
  for ((i=0;$i < $curjobs;i++))
   do
    if ! kill -0 ${pidlist[$i]} >&/dev/null
     then
      dojob $i
      break
     fi
   done
   sleep 10.9 >&/dev/null
 done
wait