Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

batch

Synopsis

    batch [options] [time]

Execute commands entered on standard input. End with EOF. Unlike at, which executes commands at a specific time, batch executes commands one after another (waiting for each one to complete). This avoids the potentially high system load caused by running several background jobs at once. The GNU/Linux and Mac OS X versions allow you to specify time, which is when the job should run. See also at.

On Solaris, batch is equivalent to at -q b -m now. It takes no arguments, reading commands from standard input. Instead of the original System V version, Mac OS X uses an earlier version of the same batch command found on GNU/Linux. The GNU/Linux version has more options.

Tip

On Mac OS X, at, atq, atrm and batch are disabled by default. See the at(1) manpage for more information.

Solaris Option

-p project

Run the job under project project.

GNU/Linux and Mac OS X Options

-f file

Read the job commands from file instead of from standard input.

-m

Send mail to the user when the job is done.

GNU/Linux Options

-q queue

Use job queue queue. See the entry for at for more information.

-v

Show the time when the job will run.

-V

Print version information to standard error before reading the job.

Example

$ batch
                     sort data.raw > data.sorted
                     troff -Tps -mm thesis.mm > bigfile.psEOF