I have a script that is a while loop that searches for a condition.
it then sends a email to let me know of the condition, but the script
checks for the condition every 5 minutes and sends me a email every 5
minutes. How do I just send me one email untill the condition exists
again?

killerlou@gmail.com wrote:
> I have a script that is a while loop that searches for a condition.
> it then sends a email to let me know of the condition, but the script
> checks for the condition every 5 minutes and sends me a email every 5
> minutes. How do I just send me one email untill the condition exists
> again?
>

Your description is very vague. Depending on your condition...

while :
do
condition && mail -s "condition got true" < mail_body
sleep 300
done


Janis

Sorry Janis,

I'll be plain.

I have a script that looks at craigslist every 5 minutes and sees if
there are free items in my location. It will find that there is one
and sends me a email, but it could be minutes or hours before there is
a new posting and what happens is that the script sends me a email
every 5 minutes. I want it to know it sent me a email and not send
another untill there is a new posting for my area. It would have to
know it was a new one not the same one.

Thats what I'm working on.

If you can , Thanks.



Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> killerlou@gmail.com wrote:
> > I have a script that is a while loop that searches for a condition.
> > it then sends a email to let me know of the condition, but the script
> > checks for the condition every 5 minutes and sends me a email every 5
> > minutes. How do I just send me one email untill the condition exists
> > again?
> >
>
> Your description is very vague. Depending on your condition...
>
> while :
> do
> condition && mail -s "condition got true" < mail_body
> sleep 300
> done
>
>
> Janis

killerlou@gmail.com wrote:
[ Please don't top-post. ]

> Sorry Janis,
>
> I'll be plain.
>
> I have a script that looks at craigslist every 5 minutes and sees if
> there are free items in my location. It will find that there is one
> and sends me a email, but it could be minutes or hours before there is
> a new posting and what happens is that the script sends me a email
> every 5 minutes. I want it to know it sent me a email and not send
> another untill there is a new posting for my area. It would have to
> know it was a new one not the same one.
>
> Thats what I'm working on.
>
> If you can , Thanks.

I don't know what "craigslists" are; I'd have expected that you would
explain the task in terms of the OS entities, files, data formats, and
the _concrete condition_ that I asked for in technical terms. What are
the concrete "items" you talk of, how is "in my location" defined, a
working directory, a filesystem?

The script below is complete in this respect; you just have to fill in
the condition part, or, tell about how the condition can be derived and
we can show you working solutions.

For example; 'condition' may be a 'grep -s' command, or a test to check
for the existance of a file '[ -f ... ]', or a command to check for a
file that is newer than another file 'find -newer', etc.

Janis

>
>
>
> Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>
>>killerlou@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>I have a script that is a while loop that searches for a condition.
>>>it then sends a email to let me know of the condition, but the script
>>>checks for the condition every 5 minutes and sends me a email every 5
>>>minutes. How do I just send me one email untill the condition exists
>>>again?
>>>
>>
>>Your description is very vague. Depending on your condition...
>>
>> while :
>> do
>> condition && mail -s "condition got true" < mail_body
>> sleep 300
>> done
>>
>>
>>Janis
>
>

In news:1177695439.880365.226560@s33g2000prh.googlegr oups.com,
killerlou@gmail.com <killerlou@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a script that looks at craigslist every 5 minutes and sees if
> there are free items in my location. It will find that there is one
> and sends me a email, but it could be minutes or hours before there is
> a new posting and what happens is that the script sends me a email
> every 5 minutes. I want it to know it sent me a email and not send
> another untill there is a new posting for my area. It would have to
> know it was a new one not the same one.
>
> Thats what I'm working on.

If your crond supports such a crontab syntax, then:
*/5 * * * * /home/you/scripts/craigslist.check

and your craigslist.check script might read:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

URL=http://phoenix.craigslist.org/zip/
address="you@some.where,sombebody_else@somewhere.e lse"
new=/tmp/newfile
old=/tmp/oldfile

lynx -dump $URL | grep -v \
"\[ $(date '+%a, %d %b')" \
> $new 2>/dev/null

if [ ! -f $old ] ; then
\cp $new $old
fi

if [ x"$(diff $new $old | sed -e 's/\"//g')" != x"" ] ; then
echo "New items listed on $URL" | \
mail -s "new free items" "$address"
\cp $new $old
fi
# end script