bash scripting try something, but quit if it's taking too long

[Matt Price]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Chris F.A. Johnson <chris-E7bvbYbpR6jSUeElwK9/Pw at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jun 2010, Matt Price wrote:
>
> > hi,
> >
> > quick scripting question.  I have an irritating emacs bug, in which
> > emacs sometimes hangs when the network's disrupted.  To deal with this
> > i have just send a command via emacsclient to the running server
> > before i suspend, which solves a solid 90% of my problems.  but
> > sometimes emacs is already hung when i want to suspend!  in that case,
> > my script hangs too and the suspend event never takes place, which is
> > almost always worse since it causes everything to lose data, not just
> > emacs.  here's my tiny function:
> >
> > suspend_wl()
> > {
> >       # Get WL to go offline
> >         if [-f /tmp/emacs1000/server]
> >           then
> >             /usr/bin/emacsclient --socket-name /tmp/emacs1000/server
> > --eval "(wl-toggle-plugged 'off)"
> >       fi
> > }
> > is there a "try" or similar command i can use around the emacsclient
> > command, to just continue if things are taking too long?
>
> wait=666       ## seconds before timing out
> suspend_wl &   ## put function into the background
> sleep $wait    ## wait
> kill $!        ## kill last background process
>
> wouldn't that guarantee that you have to wait $wait seconds before suspend?
hmm.. is there no way to, say, test once a second to see whether the job has
finished?

anyway, thanks much for the help.  best,
matt

> --
>   Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>
>   Author:
>   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
>   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
> --
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