Shell Programming and Scripting

ould we generate a sequence number based on the time of the day?

e.g. an application is scheduled to run from 0800 hrs to 1700 hrs with a frequency of Once every five minutes

the intention is to "assign" a certain value to a variable when depending on the time of the day

i.e. if the time of the day is 0800 hrs then [since it is the 01st run of the job] the value will be 01 [i.e. 1st run]
at 0805 it will be the second run so run_value=02

the need here is that we could calculate the "latest" run value at any time. Thus say, the time of the day is:

1033 hrs then the current "run number" of the job should be [from 0800-1000 hrs --> 12 run per hour times 2 hours i.e. 12 X 2 = 24 +
6 runs in the 30 minutes since 1000 hrs ....

therefore the run number being 24+6 = 30 i.e. the run number of the last run of the application was 30]

the constraint here is that ... these run numbers are limited i.e. they can be only two characters .... the possible values are

Code:

01 to 99, then a0 [a zero] to a9, aa, ab, ac to az, bo to b9, ba to bz ... z0 to zz]

could we create a tool with awk/perl that will take in
(i) start time of the application
(ii) end time of the application
(iii) frequency of the application [once every x minutes]

and based on this data - calculcate the latest run number of the job.

I know this sounds korny ... but please advise.

What doesn't make sense to me, is that this "run number" will have no discernable meaning after a while. What would happen if you get a run value of say, Q52 ? What would that mean? What happens when you reach zz? Is this some sort of homework assignment?

thanks a lot cfajohnson.

I am faced with once restriction here, I have the following shells installed on the machine:

hash
refresh
msh
recsh
chsh
csh
tsh
sh
psh
ksh
bsh
Rsh
rsh
remsh
ssh
fcinit.sh
fcinit.csh

the bash is absent. is there a way we could change the above code to use ksh/bsh?

cfajohnson - your script is awesome ... it is working ... lots of thanks

UXBLCASP01 jain1r:/home/jain1r > generate_sequence.sh.2 0800 1700
Run no. 35: 0z
UXBLCASP01 jain1r:/home/jain1r >

But please be aware that the intention is that the first run numbers can be as:

Code:

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99

only after 99th run number has completed, can we have

Code:

a0
a1
a2
a3
a4a5
....

Please suggest a method.

Break the loop into two; the first to create the numbered elements and the second to add the letters.