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The 'at' command is used to schedule commands to be executed once at a particular time in the future. More precisely, it reads a series of commands from standard input and collects them into one "at-job" which is carried out at a later date. It is found in the Unix family of operating systems and other flavors as well. The at-job inherits the current environment which can be useful. Many Unix systems allow the restriction of the at command.
'at' can be made to mail a user when done carrying out a scheduled job of theirs, can use more than one job queue, and can read a list of jobs to carry out from a file instead of standard input. A sample command to compile a C program at 11:45 A.M and email the results (STDOUT and STDERR) to your user ID would be:
echo "cc -o foo foo.c" | at 1145
It uses a daemon, 'atd', which waits in the background periodically checking the list of jobs to do and executing those at their allotted time on behalf of 'at'.
Using the batch command instead of at, it can be made to only run scheduled jobs if the system's load average is below a certain value.
Windows NT/2000/XP also has an at command (similar to cron), but it is deprecated in favor of Task Scheduler.

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See also

★ cron - runs scheduled tasks at regular intervals.

★ launchd - Apple Computer's replacement for at.

★ List of Unix programs

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