How can I make a script wait?

[mband2000]

Hello,

I'm running a cron job that exec a PHP script. The php script sends out emails to over 10,000 users.

I wanted to know, is there a way to send out 50 emails then pause the PHP script for 5mins before sending out the next 50 and so on, and so on.

The only thing I could think of is that.. after 50 emails have been sent.. I could loop the time until it reaches 5mins 😕

I'm not too sure how I could do it... can someone help?

[devinemke]

you can use [man]sleep[/man], though your script is likely to time out depending on your max_execution_time setting in your php.ini

[mband2000]

thanks devinemke...

Is there any other method anyone knows of?

[MarkR]

If you're running PHP CLI from a cron job, it won't timeout. Therefore using sleep() is perfectly acceptable.

However, you should calculate how long it's like to take, and ensure that a situation can never arise where more than one copy of the cron job is running at once.

You should also record how much of the task is complete so that if the script is interrupted for any reason, it can continue from where it left off.

Mark