Hello,
I have a doubt in Windows batch programming,

Straight to the point, how to run a program at regular interval?

I have a batch script[Check.bat] which checks for a process in the running list, if it is running then the program quits, else the program shuts down the system.

Now I need another script which launches 'Check.bat' at every 1 minute.

Can anyone help me please!Task schedulerI tend to hard code this into the program, so instead of STARTING and stoping, it just performs it's task every minute instead of exiting. This allows you to drop it in the background and not have to worry about a little black window popping up all the time.

Code: [Select]@echo off
REM this sets %m% equal to the minute of the current time.
set m=%time:~3,2%
:loop1
REM this will add 1 to the minute, telling it when it should stop
set /a m+=1
REM this stops it from waiting for 1:89:00 AM :D
if %m% EQU 60 set m=0
:loop2
REM this waits for the minute to equal whatever %m% is equal too, in this case, it is the minutes +1 from the last time you passed loop1
if %m% EQU %time:~3,2% goto yourProgramCode
REM this sends you back to loop2, making sure that you can only exit the loop when the time is correct
goto loop2



:yourProgramCode
...
...
...
REM this goes back to loop1 to add 1 to %m% and to wait a minute
goto loop1
As long as your program doesn't take over a minute to complete, then this should WORK. If it does, then you'll have to change the code a bit to refresh at loop1 to =%time:~3,2% instead of +=1. Hope this helped.

EDIT: Fell free to remove the lines that start with "REM" if it hurts your eyes.This is dependent on on your regional and language settings. Not everyone displays the time and date the same way.
You could just use the PING trick to delay execution and then rerun the loop or if you are on Vista or Windows 7 you can use the TIMEOUT command.That is very interesting, never knew that. I'm sure you can alter the :~#,# thing to get it correct for your system if you were so inclined. I like the timeout command, that will come in handy later.Task scheduler could be set to invoke cmd /c START /MIN batchfile.bat. the batch file will appear as a minimized window at each invocation.


adding this sort of FUNCTIONALITY is called "re-inventing the wheel" and unless you want to learn more about the wheel (or in this case, how to invoke programs at an interval yourself) it is a sub-par solution. Linux has crontab for this, and Windows has task scheduler for this. There is no reason to not use these for scheduled tasks.Quote from: BC_Programmer on June 08, 2012, 05:21:14 AM

Task scheduler could be set to invoke cmd /c START /MIN batchfile.bat. the batch file will appear as a minimized window at each invocation.


adding this sort of functionality is called "re-inventing the wheel" and unless you want to learn more about the wheel (or in this case, how to invoke programs at an interval yourself) it is a sub-par solution. Linux has crontab for this, and Windows has task scheduler for this. There is no reason to not use these for scheduled tasks.

Code: [Select]schtasks /create /tn "repeat app.exe every minute" /tr "app.exe" /sc MINUTE
Would do precisely what is required, if set to run the OP's batch file.

Cool, how would you include this into a program without it making a new task upon every start-up/run?

By adding the /F switch.