clock_nanosleep(2), I need a timer which will work with milliseconds. Sort output attached The script stops if it successfully pings a website, and sleep introduces a 10-second delay between unsuccessful pings. start_time=$ (date +%s) # perform a task end_time=$ (date +%s) # elapsed time with . By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. In case, sleep is an alias or a function, try replacing sleep with \sleep. integer, and only accepted a single argument without a suffix. I have installed my flash application using shell script. How to determine if a bash variable is empty? How to check if an SSM2220 IC is authentic and not fake? Talk about everyone else overcomplicating it @MikeCauser leading zeros much more readable and signal intent to the reader of the code later. It only takes a minute to sign up. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Dystopian Science Fiction story about virtual reality (called being hooked-up) from the 1960's-70's, Trying to determine if there is a calculation for AC in DND5E that incorporates different material items worn at the same time. I came around with this solution which works great. As of bash-4.4 (September 2016) all the loadables are now built and installed by default on platforms that support it, though they are built as separate shared-object files, and without a .so suffix. How can I detect when a signal becomes noisy? I tried the "sleep 0.1" suggestion, but it says "sleep: bad character in argument". When I run sleep 0.1 in terminal it works fine. The sleep command is a useful way to add pauses in your Bash script. Please add first line of your script and show how you start script. powershell -command "Please Wait for 5 second" -s 5. type this command in the command line or batch file. To specify other time units, use the following syntax: is an internal Bash variable that stores the PID of the last job run in the background. Get started, freeCodeCamp is a donor-supported tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity organization (United States Federal Tax Identification Number: 82-0779546). But if you're on embedded system with busybox or just don't have coreutils, then you're out of luck unless you have perl. Sleep accepts decimal numbers so you can break it down this like: Combination of mr.spuratic's solution and coles's solution. I want to sleep something like 10 milliseconds. So you could use: sleep $ (python3 -c "import random;print (random.uniform (.2,.8))") However for the simple case of a sleep value between 200ms and 800ms you could likely get away with generating an integer between 200 and 600 (which you can do in bash using the built . rev2023.4.17.43393. Equivalent bash command: sleep - Delay for a specified time . New external SSD acting up, no eject option. Over 10,000 Linux users love this monthly newsletter. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. As you can guess from the name, its only function is to sleep. 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. This would make your script pause for a whole year. Improve this answer. Just use time [any command]. When the user issues a multiple command sequence in Linux, the commands execute immediately one after another or concurrently (e.g., the tee command). Though you can use it in a shell directly, the sleep command is commonly used to introduce a delay in the execution of a bash script. The downside is that the loadables may . Is there a free software for modeling and graphical visualization crystals with defects? signal(7), mCnt=${mCnt}+1 To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. When I was trying to find a way to make a script pause for less than one second, I found that this is not true. If you have pv installed, you can use the following one-liner to display a countdown timer and sleep for a minute (or any other amount of time, just change 60 to the desired number of seconds): cat /dev/zero | pv -B 1 -L 1 -tpe -s 60 -S > /dev/null. How to concatenate string variables in Bash. For example, you might want the script to wait while a process completes or before retrying a failed command. How are small integers and of certain approximate numbers generated in computations managed in memory? Start-Sleep -m 30000. To pause using the sleep command, pass the amount of time that has to paused as arguments to the command. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Viewed 501 times. Linux sleep command is one of the simplest commands out there. https://github.com/fedora-sysv/initscripts/blob/3c3fe4a4d1b2a1113ed302df3ac9866ded51b01b/src/usleep.c is the actual source code for usleep.c on the redhat ecosystem. sleep 300 However, sometimes it is necessary to postpone the execution of commands and provide enough time for the system to produce the expected results. And how to capitalize on that? Portability notes On some systems, sleep() may be implemented using alarm(2) and SIGALRM (POSIX.1 permits this); mixing calls to alarm(2) and sleep() is a bad idea. 8 seconds. The sleep may be lengthened slightly by any system activity or by the time spent processing the call or by the granularity of system timers. We also have thousands of freeCodeCamp study groups around the world. I'm trying to get my script to pause randomly between 20 and 10 seconds where the max amount of time is 20 and minimum 10. Yes of course , in my bash script I add "sleep 1" , in some lines , but script run very slowly , so after some conclusion I calculate that sleep 0.1 also bring good results and more faster About the delay , I need delay in order to solve the ssh problem in my bash script , I perform paralel ssh login to some machines by expect and without delay its will not work , As you know from my question the delay should fit both Linux and Solaris. - Zilk. Although some, mostly older, implementations of sleep only accept whole minutes as arguments, GNU sleep accepts arbitrary floating point values as well. Can I use below scripts ? Like in this case we want to have the script pause for one-fifth of a second. The script snippet below shows how sleep gives the CPU enough time to perform the calculation before the next iteration. How do I check if a directory exists or not in a Bash shell script? The output of this example script shows that the execution lasted 30 seconds: The following example illustrates the use of the sleep command in a script that checks whether a website is online. If there are two or more numbers included, the system will wait for the amount of time equivalent to the sum of those numbers. sleep is a very popular command and we can start sleep from 1 second: but what the alternative if I need to wait only 0.1 second or between 0.1 to 1 second ? You can also use the -milliseconds parameter to specify how long the resource sleeps in milliseconds. not be a negative TimeSpan and must not exceed [int]::MaxValue milliseconds. In case, sleep is an alias or a function, try replacing sleep with \sleep. Can a rotating object accelerate by changing shape? Sleep in milliseconds. I just garbled lines. Content Discovery initiative 4/13 update: Related questions using a Machine How to sleep less than a second in linux bash, Executing compound XDOTOOL shell command requires a delay to be sucessfuly executed. More examples so I want to have them in QUEUE ..and release them for execution on Can anyone point me to the right direction on how to write a simple script that will display a message on any terminal when implemented? To do that, you will need to use the sleep command to delay for a specified amount of time in seconds, minutes, hours or days. To cause sleep to pause for one day, four hours, seven minutes and five seconds, use a command like this: sleep 1d 4h 7m 5s. Thanks for contributing an answer to Server Fault! sleep 300 The sleep may be lengthened slightly by any Linux Commands Cheat Sheet: With Examples, Linux Ping Command Tutorial with Examples, How to Check CPU Utilization in Linux with Command Line. How to display a random line from a text file? This property is useful when the following commands execution depends on the successful completion of a previous command. In what context did Garak (ST:DS9) speak of a lie between two truths? On Linux, sleep() is implemented via nanosleep(2). Can dialogue be put in the same paragraph as action text? I am reviewing a very bad paper - do I have to be nice? Marko Aleksi is a Technical Writer at phoenixNAP. Unless your distro/OS has done something creative (sadly RHEL/CentOS 8 build bash-4.4 with loadable extensions deliberately removed), you should be able to do instead: (The man page implies BASH_LOADABLES_PATH is set automatically, I find this is not the case in the official distribution as of 4.4.12. In a sample bash script, it could look like this: !/bin/bash echo "Sleeping for 5 seconds". If possible, trim it down to a short self-contained version that produces the problem (if it's longer than 5 lines you probably haven't trimmed it enough). Server Fault is a question and answer site for system and network administrators. Show us the entire script. time ./sleep.sh Sleeping for 5 seconds. C programming language provides sleep() function in order to wait for a current thread for a specified time.slepp() function will sleep given thread specified time for the current executable. Only the EINVAL error return is documented by SUSv2 and POSIX.1-2001. @2019 - All Right Reserved. Alternative ways to code something like a table within a table? How to introduce delay in the Bash/Shell Script till key stroke. The Linux Programming Interface, Or will it yield to other threads? We accomplish this by creating thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons - all freely available to the public. sleep $ ( (10 + RANDOM % 11)); It's 11 because 10-20 are 11 numbers. By default, the system reads the number after sleep as the number of seconds. expect script + write "if" in expect script, perl + sed + remove lines that start with "#", How can I know the absolute path of a running process? Start-Sleep -Seconds 0.0005. 1.Execute set of commands. To do this, you can use the very straightforward sleep command. Success! How do I get the directory where a Bash script is located from within the script itself? nanosleep(2), But in Linux we can implement our own function that will take duration in milliseconds as input and sleep for that duration. If and when it is set correctly you need only enable -f filename commandname as required.). Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. Since this helped me out, I hope my suggestion can improve the usleep idea. We're storing the PID in a variable (process_id). That's it for the basic usage of the sleep command!sleep is a command-line utility that allows you to suspends the calling process for a specified time. Please try again. If you ever want to insert a random sleep/pause into a running script: sleep $[ ( $RANDOM % 10 ) + 1 ]s Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. So put this simple yet powerful tool in your Bash toolbox and code on! Used in conjunction with . They may trigger the process at the same time. Solaris 11 sleep does support fractional seconds. 3.Execute next set of commands. Real polynomials that go to infinity in all directions: how fast do they grow? Introduce a delay till key stroke. The correct way to sleep in a batch file is to use the timeout command, introduced in Windows 2000. sleep() function is provided by unistd.h library which is a short cut of Unix standard library. Run an interactive bash subshell with initial commands without returning to the ("super") shell immediately, awk + perl + get two arguments in to awk syntax. What information do I need to ensure I kill the same process, not one spawned much later with the same PID? typeset -i mCnt=0 Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. For example, sleep 2m 30s will create a pause of 2 and a half minutes. So syntax for sleep command for Unix like system is: $ sleep NUMBER Where NUMBER must be in seconds. PS> Get-Date; Start-Sleep -Seconds 5; Get-Date Friday, May 13, 2022 9:38:15 AM Friday, May 13, 2022 9:38:20 AM. Use, alarm(2), getitimer(2), nanosleep(2), select(2), setitimer(2), sleep(3), ualarm(3), usleep takes microseconds as arguments instead of seconds. On some types of machines (namely BSD systems and MacOS,) the only unit of time supported is seconds. For example, if you want to delay a PowerShell script for 0.0005 seconds (0.5 Milliseconds), you can use any of the commands below: Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 0.5. But what if your bash script to sleep for milliseconds? I like the usleep idea, but I can't make a comment under it. On the original BSD implementation, and in glibc before version 2.2.2, the return type of this function is void. You can specify the sleep time in minutes in the following way: This will pause the script/shell for one minute. In this example, the execution of commands pauses for one and one-half seconds. 10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting, Please help me understand how sort -k3,3 -k 4,4 short* works , is it sorting 3 and 4 th field ? 1 Answer. Its syntax is as follows: sleep n Where, n is the number of seconds you'd like it to wait. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. You can change it from 5 to any number. It is as easy as typing sleep N. This will pause your script for N seconds, with N being either a positive integer or a floating point number. The following example makes echo commands execute in one-second intervals: It is possible to assign a variable to the sleep command. The good thing is that you can use floating point (decimal points) with sleep command. This example shows that execution is paused for 5 seconds when run from the command line. sleep 300 Start-Sleep. The argument can include an optional suffix . The PING timeout method uses a PING command to a non-existent IP address so that it has to wait to the end of its built-in or specified timeout period before finishing. Stupid mistake, good catch. Prints the exit status of the wait command. It takes microseconds (= 1e-6 seconds) as parameter, so to sleep 1 millisecond you would enter: I had the same problem (no shell usleep on Solaris) so I wrote my own thus: Doesn't check arguments - I'd recommend a properly written one if you wanted to keep it but that (gcc usleep.c -o usleep) will get you out of a hole. It is hard to meassure the time but it is definitely less than 1 second. Success! So, if you use the sleep command with x and the next command can only be run after x seconds. that I teach, look here. Then run either by: ./foo.sh or bash foo.sh. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. People timing bash scripts are usually not very concerned about that (unless they run several billions of scripts per megasecond). time. Not the answer you're looking for? My goal is to run the same Shell script in a parallel mode. Working Hi All, kcsdev:/home/jmcnama> time usleep.sh real 0m0.18s user 0m0.03s sys 0m0.05s. Unlike the sleep command, which waits for a specified time, the wait command waits for all or specific background tasks to finish. See I want to write a script and insert a delay time of 10 seconds. How to Replace Environment Variables Using the envsubst Command. Make sure you're running your script in Bash, not /bin/sh. '---The SLEEP command takes milliseconds by default but we will adjust it PRINT "Enter a number for each second you want to wait\nthen press Enter "INPUT millisec PRINT "Sleeping . I changed my function as below: Make sure you're running your script in Bash, not /bin/sh. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. The syntax of the sleep command is simple: In the example above, after sleep 5 was executed, the second command prompt appeared with a 5-second delay. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. His innate curiosity regarding all things IT, combined with over a decade long background in writing, teaching and working in IT-related fields, led him to technical writing, where he has an opportunity to employ his skills and make technology less daunting to everyone. The timeout would get interrupted if the user hits any key; however, the command also accepts the optional switch /nobreak, which effectively ignores anything the user may press, except . Ubuntu and the circle of friends logo are trade marks of Canonical Limited and are used under licence. command1 Why don't objects get brighter when I reflect their light back at them? Consider the following shell script: The script defines a variable called SLEEP_INTERVALwhose value is later used as an argument to the sleep command. sleep $ ( ( 1/5 )) For longer periods, you can also use suffixes to make the commands shorter. That .1 means .1 seconds. Some of them, like Perl, need to have an extra dependency installed to be able to sleep for less than a whole second. rev2023.4.17.43393. 10 and 20 are not min and max of the RANDOM number. Try to compile that in your Solaris. freeCodeCamp's open source curriculum has helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers. PowerShell cannot execute the second Get-Date command until the sleep timer expires. Thread.Sleep Method. Uses a TimeSpan object to specify how long the resource sleeps in milliseconds. Other Unix-like operating systems will likely support the following units of time: It is also possible to use more than one argument with the sleep command. Use sleep to tell the system to play an mp3 file after a certain amount of time. Not all *nix systems have usleep by default. When you're writing a shell script, you may find that you need it to wait a certain number of seconds before proceeding. Used in conjunction with other commands, sleep can help you create a timed alarm, run operations in the correct order, space out attempts to connect to a website, and more. By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. By default, the system reads the number after sleep as the number of seconds. Otherwise, you would have to calculate how many seconds there are in the time you want. Like 600 seconds for 10 minutes. free(1), Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Why hasn't the Attorney General investigated Justice Thomas? The most promising approach for millisecond-resolution delays seemed to be use of the PING command. on solaris. HTML rendering created 2022-12-18 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface, maintainer of the Linux man-pages project.. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Note that the s suffix is still optional here. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Why is Noether's theorem not guaranteed by calculus? Unbelievably, sleep also accepts scientific e notation. Here are some common usage of the chattr command in Linux., Learn how to replace environment variables using the envsubst command. For example, sleep 2m 30s will create a pause of 2 and a half minutes. Why are parallel perfect intervals avoided in part writing when they are so common in scores? The sleep command is one of the most useful Linux commands. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. The syntax of the sleep command is simple: sleep [number] In the example above, after sleep 5 was executed, the second command prompt appeared with a 5-second delay. For example, if you use the follow command: This will keep the script waiting for 1 hour, 10 minutes and 5 seconds. Is "in fear for one's life" an idiom with limited variations or can you add another noun phrase to it? command5 Is there an other way? You can also put it in a function: Bash has a "loadable" sleep which supports fractional seconds, and eliminates overheads of an external command: The downside is that the loadables may not be provided with your bash binary, so you would need to compile them yourself as shown (though on Solaris it would not necessarily be as simple as above). Donations to freeCodeCamp go toward our education initiatives, and help pay for servers, services, and staff. You can use it for many tasks, such as waiting for an operation to complete or pausing before Of course, the CPU and other processes will run without a problem. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Of course, there are many other scripting languages you could use. Keep in mind that n is a compulsory argument, . New Home Construction Electrical Schematic. If you want to delay the script in hours, you can do that with the h option: Even if you want to pause the bash script for days, you can do that with the d suffix: This could help if you want to run on alternate days or week days. mention this type explicitly. Here is a quickie shell script (bash) tip. getitimer(2), All Rights Reserved. 2. however since its huge i would like to introduce a delay in exection until the process is over Run on Only One Host at a Time With Ansible. Thus, with this option, you can easily calculate time difference in seconds between two clock measurements. $! Programs will be more portable if they never Process of finding limits for multivariable functions. The usleep() function suspends execution of the calling thread for (at least) usec microseconds. You can omit the parameter name or you can Instead, you can just write sleep 10m or sleep 1d for one day instead of sleep 86400. Storing configuration directly in the executable, with no external config files, Disconnected Feynman diagram for the 2-point correlation function. Assuming it is not a leep year. i would like to know how to introduce a delay in the execution of a cmd? For one-fifth of a second ) with bash sleep milliseconds command, pass the of! Is authentic and not fake time you want do I check if a directory exists or not a! Intervals avoided in part writing when they are so common in scores actual source code for on... As you can change it from 5 to any number ) with sleep command company, and help pay servers... A quickie shell script in part writing when they are so common in?. Have the script pause for a specified time, the system to an... Ssd acting up, no eject option this case we want to write script. 20 are not min and max of the code later never process finding. By clicking Post your answer, you agree to our terms of,... To determine if a bash script is located from within the script itself more than people! No external config files, Disconnected Feynman diagram for the 2-point correlation function config,. Acting up, no eject option do I get the directory where a bash script to sleep and! Specific background tasks to finish multivariable functions background tasks to finish pass the amount of.. The following example makes echo commands execute in one-second intervals: it definitely... Certain number of seconds called SLEEP_INTERVALwhose value is later used as an argument to the command line seconds. Ds9 ) speak of a lie between two clock measurements is implemented via nanosleep ( )... For ( at least ) usec microseconds to any number a very bad -! Line from a text file or before retrying a failed command hope my suggestion can improve usleep! Like system is: $ sleep number where number must be in seconds between two?! Did Garak ( ST: DS9 ) speak of a previous command and must not exceed int! Nanosleep ( 2 ) bash script is located from within the script pause for one-fifth a. When it is possible to assign a variable ( process_id ) least usec. Linux., learn how to Replace Environment Variables using the envsubst command I like the usleep idea for command! 2.2.2, the system to play an mp3 file after a certain number of seconds uses TimeSpan. Only accepted a single argument without a suffix to infinity in all directions: fast! Cc BY-SA the -milliseconds parameter to specify how long the resource sleeps in.! The Linux Programming Interface, or responding to other answers time but it is possible to assign variable! ) is implemented via nanosleep ( 2 ), Connect and share knowledge within a table within a?. Other answers type of this function is to run the same paragraph as action text decimal numbers so you use... Unit of time supported is seconds service, privacy policy and cookie policy by and. Helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers for milliseconds Inc ; user contributions licensed CC... N is a compulsory argument, specified time max of the RANDOM number ( namely BSD and. Of scripts per megasecond ) thus, with this option, you would have to calculate how many there. Connect and share knowledge within a table within a single location that is structured and to. You & # 92 ; sleep Disconnected Feynman diagram for the 2-point correlation function min and max of calling... Suggestion can improve the usleep idea, but it says `` sleep: bad character in ''... Logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc ; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA and... For help, clarification, or will it yield to other threads argument, and staff your bash.! Consider the following example makes echo commands execute in one-second intervals: it is possible to assign a to! Make a comment under it is documented by SUSv2 and POSIX.1-2001 that go to infinity in all directions: fast! Return type of this function is void on some types of machines ( namely BSD systems MacOS! Correctly you need it to wait while a process completes or before retrying a failed command working Hi all kcsdev. Then run either by:./foo.sh or bash foo.sh you could use limits for functions. That has to paused as arguments to the sleep command is one of most... Am reviewing a very bad paper - do I get the directory where a shell... It successfully pings a website, and in glibc before version 2.2.2, the system reads the of! From a text file a task end_time= $ ( ( 1/5 ) ) longer! Pause for a whole year our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy x. Make sure you 're writing a shell script bash variable is empty by:./foo.sh or bash foo.sh -. Make sure you 're writing a shell script in bash, not /bin/sh sleep as the after... Bash foo.sh thread for ( at least ) usec microseconds a question answer! And help pay for servers, services, and our products helped me out I. If it successfully pings a website, and interactive coding lessons - all freely to... Command: sleep - delay for a specified time will work with milliseconds acting up, no eject option when.: bad character in argument '' concerned about that ( unless they run several billions of per... Number after sleep as the number after sleep as the number after as! They grow for Unix like system is: $ sleep number where number be! For servers, services, and staff one of the calling thread for ( at least ) usec.! Site for system and network administrators script/shell for one 's life '' an idiom with Limited or. At them part writing when they are so common in scores clock_nanosleep ( 2.! Process completes or before retrying a failed command easily calculate time difference in.... This by creating thousands of videos, articles, and only accepted a single location that structured! The executable, with no external config files, Disconnected Feynman diagram for 2-point. Which waits for all or specific background tasks to finish delay time of seconds! Unit of time that has to paused as arguments to the sleep bash sleep milliseconds minutes... Inc ; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA signal intent to the reader of the simplest commands there! Execution of commands pauses for one 's life '' an idiom with Limited variations or can you another... Into your RSS reader ways to code something like a table and are under... Till key stroke to display a RANDOM line from a text file other answers your! Either by:./foo.sh or bash foo.sh that has to paused as arguments to the sleep command is of... To the sleep command is one of the chattr command in Linux., learn how to introduce a delay of! Einval error return is documented by SUSv2 and POSIX.1-2001 in all directions: how fast they! Seconds when run from the command line 5 to any number ) is implemented via nanosleep ( 2 ) Connect... More readable and signal intent to the reader of the simplest commands out there about! Within the script defines a variable ( process_id ) paste this URL into RSS. 5 seconds when run from the name, its only function is.. Sleep accepts decimal numbers so you can also use the -milliseconds parameter to how! Easy to search config files, Disconnected Feynman diagram for the 2-point correlation function and cookie.! N'T make a comment under it + RANDOM % 11 ) ) for periods! Why has n't the Attorney General investigated Justice Thomas pass the amount of time that to! In fear for one minute max of the code later a text file calling thread for ( least! Script defines a variable called SLEEP_INTERVALwhose value is later used as an argument the. Something like a table and help pay for servers, services, and our products I check if SSM2220! As you can also use suffixes to make the commands shorter megasecond ) all specific. To our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy with this,! Bash command: sleep - delay for a whole year why is Noether 's not... That the s suffix is still optional here the second Get-Date command until the sleep time in in. The 2-point correlation function trade marks of Canonical Limited and are used under licence Replace Environment Variables the. Of course, there are many other scripting languages you could use with sleep command, waits. ) # perform a task end_time= $ ( ( 10 + RANDOM % 11 )! More than 40,000 people get jobs as developers reads the number of seconds if a bash variable empty! The following way: this will pause the script/shell for one and one-half seconds previous command with defects the. A lie between two truths be run after x seconds that ( unless they bash sleep milliseconds several billions scripts! Which works great: the script pause for one-fifth of a previous command, Feynman... -I mCnt=0 Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and to! Is empty I tried the `` sleep: bad character in argument.... Be use of the chattr command in Linux., learn how to determine if a variable! Not fake delay time of 10 seconds: make sure you 're running your script in,... Compulsory argument, can change it from 5 to any number ( 10 + RANDOM % )... To add pauses in your bash script sleep accepts decimal numbers so you can also use the straightforward!