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Asked: 2026-05-11T10:05:30+00:00

I want my bash script to sleep until a specific time. So, I want

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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’-daemon is not a solution, as I need to block a running script until a certain date/time.

Is there such a command?

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1 Answer

  1. As mentioned by Outlaw Programmer, I think the solution is just to sleep for the correct number of seconds.

    To do this in bash, do the following:

    current_epoch=$(date +%s) target_epoch=$(date -d '01/01/2010 12:00' +%s)  sleep_seconds=$(( $target_epoch - $current_epoch ))  sleep $sleep_seconds

    To add precision down to nanoseconds (effectively more around milliseconds) use e.g. this syntax:

    current_epoch=$(date +%s.%N) target_epoch=$(date -d '20:25:00.12345' +%s.%N)  sleep_seconds=$(echo '$target_epoch - $current_epoch'|bc)  sleep $sleep_seconds

    Note that macOS / OS X does not support precision below seconds, you would need to use coreutils from brew instead → see these instructions

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