Sleep until a specific time/date

Question

I want my bash script to sleep until a specific time. So, I want a command like \"sleep\" which takes no interval but an end time and sleeps until then.

The \"at\"-d

Answer 1

timeToWait = $(( $end - $start ))

Beware that "timeToWait" could be a negative number! (for example, if you specify to sleep until "15:57" and now it's "15:58"). So you have to check it to avoid strange message errors:

#!/bin/bash
set -o nounset

### // Sleep until some date/time. 
# // Example: sleepuntil 15:57; kdialog --msgbox "Backup needs to be done."


error() {
  echo "$@" >&2
  exit 1;
}

NAME_PROGRAM=$(basename "$0")

if [[ $# != 1 ]]; then
     error "ERROR: program \"$NAME_PROGRAM\" needs 1 parameter and it has received: $#." 
fi


current=$(date +%s.%N)
target=$(date -d "$1" +%s.%N)

seconds=$(echo "scale=9; $target - $current" | bc)

signchar=${seconds:0:1}
if [ "$signchar" = "-" ]; then
     error "You need to specify in a different way the moment in which this program has to finish, probably indicating the day and the hour like in this example: $NAME_PROGRAM \"2009/12/30 10:57\"."
fi

sleep "$seconds"

# // End of file