Applescript errors after sleeping for 5 minutes

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Level 2

255 points

Applescript errors after sleeping for 5 minutes

So I have a script, which checks to see if an application is running, sleeps for a few minutes and then checks again before continuing it's program. For the sleep, I'm using

"do shell script 'sleep 300'"

If I set the sleep value for anything less than 300 (5 minutes) the scrip executes flawlessly every time. If I set the sleep value for 5 minutes (my ideal value) it errors out. What's weird is that if I put in some dialog box displays at various checkpoints after the sleep, it executes without problem. Is there something important about 5 minute intervals in AppleScript that would be causing this?

MBP, Mac OS X (10.5.5), Powerbook (Nov. 02)

Posted on Oct 20, 2008 9:33 AM

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Answer 1

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Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

Oct 20, 2008 10:09 AM in response to Tevis Money

What's wrong is that you're going about this the wrong way.

Since you're using do shell script, AppleScript is waiting for a response from the shell. By default every action has a timeout value (so that AppleScript doesn't sit and wait indefinitely for something that's broken). That's what the 5 minutes indicates - up to 5 minutes and you're fine, but after 5 minutes AppleScript is giving up, assuming that the shell command failed.

There are two solutions - one is to change the timeout value, but the better solution is to use AppleScript's sleep rather than call a shell script:

delay 300

Note that you can also use AppleScript date math as well:

delay (5 * minutes)

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Answer 2

Tevis Money Author

Level 2

255 points

Oct 20, 2008 11:15 AM in response to Camelot

I knew that AppleScript had a delay, but for some reason I recall the delay function causing applescript to either eat a lot of processor time or hang the cursor while it was waiting, which was why I was using sleep instead. Is this no longer the case?

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Answer 3

Camelot

Level 9

54,333 points

Oct 20, 2008 12:01 PM in response to Tevis Money

Is this no longer the case?

No. That was fixed a long time ago.

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