On Unix-like operating systems, at reads a series of commands from standard input and collects them into one "at-job" which is carried out at a later date. The job inherits the current environment, so that it is executed in the same working directory and with the same environment variables set as when it was scheduled. It differs from cron, which is used for recurring executions. As with cron, many Unix systems allow the administrator to restrict access to the at command. at can be made to mail a user when done carrying out a scheduled job, can use more than one job queue, and can read a list of jobs to carry out from a computer file instead of standard input. The Linux at command was mostly written by Thomas Koenig.
In addition to the graphical user interface for Windows Task Scheduler in Control Panel, Windows provides an at.exe command that schedules commands and programs to run on a computer at a specified time and date. It is available since Windows NT, but is now deprecated in favor of schtasks. It can only be used when the Schedule service is running. When used without parameters, at.exe lists scheduled commands. at.exe cannot access tasks created or modified by Control Panel or schtasks.exe. Also, tasks created with at.exeare not interactive by default; interactivity needs to be explicitly requested. The ReactOS implementation is based on the Windows variant. It was developed by Eric Kohl and is licensed under the GPLv2.
The atq program lists the currently queued jobs, while atrm removes jobs from the queue: $ atq 1234 2011-08-12 11:45 cc -o foo foo.c user $ atrm 1234 $ atq
In some Unix-like computer operating systems, it uses a daemon, atd, which waits in the background periodically checking the list of jobs to do and executing those at their scheduled time on behalf of at.
Variants
The command can be used instead of at to only run scheduled jobs if the system's load average is below a certain value.
Microsoft Windows and ReactOS
To use at.exe, the user must be a member of the local Administrators group. The command-syntax is: at
at \\ComputerName] hours:minutes command]
\\ ComputerName – This parameter specifies a remote computer. If it is omitted, at schedules the commands and programs on the local computer.
ID – This parameter specifies the identification number assigned to a scheduled command.
/delete – This parameter cancels a scheduled command. If ID is omitted, all of the scheduled commands on the computer are canceled.
/yes – This parameter answers yes to all queries from the system when you delete scheduled events.
hours : minutes – This parameter specifies the time when to run the command.
/interactive – This parameter allows the given command to interact with the desktop of the user who is logged on at the time command runs.
/every: – This parameter runs the given command on every specified day or days of the week or month.
date – This parameter specifies the date when to run the given command. One or more days of the week can be specified. If date is omitted, at uses the current day of the month.
/next: – This parameter runs command on the next occurrence of the day.
command – This parameter specifies the Windows command, program, or batch program that will be run.
