Question

I’m looking at creating a randomizing script in Python to execute a loop over a specific amount of time. If I wanted to run a loop 100 times within 5 days at random times within that 5 days, what would be the best way to go about it?

Answer 1

Pick a hundred uniformly distributed random points along the interval and sleep between them:

import random, time

DURATION = 5 * 86400  # five days
EXECS = 100

now = time.time()
points = sorted(random.random() * DURATION + now
                for i in xrange(EXECS))

for p in points:
   now = time.time()
   if p > now:
       time.sleep(p - now)
   # run your loop here