Making Your at Jobs Quiet (Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition)

25.6. Making Your at Jobs Quiet

Most modern versions of at will mail you any output that your commands make. You might think of using the command line below to throw at output into the Unix trash can, /dev/null (Section 43.12):

>& Section 43.5

% at sometime... >& /dev/null     ...wrong

but that won't work because it throws away the output of the at command itself. at just saves your job in a file to be run later by a system program. The commands you want quiet are the commands stored in that file. One way to keep at quiet, if you use a shell like csh, is:

% at sometime...
at> some command >& /dev/null
at> another command >& /dev/null
at> ...etc... >& /dev/null
at> CTRL-d

Bourne-type shells make it easier:

exec > Section 36.5

$ at sometime...
at> exec > /dev/null 2>&1
at> some command
at> another command
at> ...etc...
at> CTRL-d

Two notes:

Some versions of at have a -s option that runs your job with the Bourne shell.
Not all versions of at prompt you with at> as I showed above.

-- JP