Removing all at jobs except the ones running?

[ubuntu-users-list at thomas.freit.ag]

Hi Bo,

On 07.03.22 11:50, Bo Berglund wrote:
> $ atq
> 257     Mon Mar  7 19:58:00 2022 a pi
> 260     Mon Mar  7 10:59:00 2022 = pi
> 268     Mon Mar  7 18:59:00 2022 a pi
> 273     Tue Mar  8 00:05:00 2022 a pi
> 267     Mon Mar  7 17:59:00 2022 a pi
> 256     Mon Mar  7 15:58:00 2022 a pi
> 266     Mon Mar  7 16:59:00 2022 a pi
> 264     Mon Mar  7 14:59:00 2022 a pi
> 271     Mon Mar  7 21:59:00 2022 a pi
> 255     Mon Mar  7 11:58:00 2022 a pi
> 263     Mon Mar  7 13:59:00 2022 a pi
> 261     Mon Mar  7 11:59:00 2022 a pi
> 258     Mon Mar  7 23:58:00 2022 a pi
> 265     Mon Mar  7 15:59:00 2022 a pi
> 262     Mon Mar  7 12:59:00 2022 a pi
> 270     Mon Mar  7 20:59:00 2022 a pi
> 272     Mon Mar  7 23:59:00 2022 a pi
> 269     Mon Mar  7 19:59:00 2022 a pi
> 
> so now I need a command which will remove what is output from "atq -q =" from
> the output of atq without argument...

Looks like you are only usinq queue "a" (which is the default), easiest approach would be atq -q a to list all those jobs. ;-)

Another approach would be to filter by second last colum, which can be done with awk, this will print column 1 from each line
which has no equal sign in the second last colum:
$ atq | awk '$(NF-1) != "=" { print $1 }'

> I am pretty dumb when dealing with bash scripting, so this is probably over the
> top of me.

[...]

> I tried this in my script atremove but the output is really confusing:

I would assume, that single quotes break something (quotation is tricky), if you run your script with "bash -x", you will get an idea
(comments by me):

+ CMD='atq -q = | cut -f 1'
+ echo 'Cmd: atq -q = | cut -f 1'
Cmd: atq -q = | cut -f 1
++ atq -q = '|' cut -f 1				# pipe is single quoted on execution
atq: invalid option -- 'f'
Usage: at [-V] [-q x] [-f file] [-mMlbv] timespec ...
       at [-V] [-q x] [-f file] [-mMlbv] -t time
       at -c job ...
       atq [-V] [-q x]
       at [ -rd ] job ...
       atrm [-V] job ...
       batch
+ RUNNING=						# empty, because above failed
+ echo 'Running: '
Running:
+ eval 'atq | cut -f 1 | grep -v '			# grep is missing an argument due to the empty var
++ atq
++ cut -f 1
++ grep -v

Using "bash -x" is alway a good start for debugging, I would recomment shellcheck as another tool to check your scripts as well.

hth,
Thomas