Batch children details condition compare date to start time

[Dan Power]

I have one job in a batch that they don't want to run until after a certain date. I thought the condition field could work for that. However, I am getting all or nothing depending on my comparison sign. For example, say the start time is today (20260121).

These all allow the job to run. But logically they should all fail.

int("20260120000000") >= int($starttime)

20260120000000 >= $starttime

"20260120000000" >= "$starttime"

These all fail when I am expecting them to succeed.
int("20260122000000") <= int($starttime)

20260122000000 <= $starttime

"20260122000000" <= "$starttime"

I used the run command to check the value of $starttime and see it in YYYMMDD.... format but I read one post that said dates could be in epoch depending on where they are used. All I was to do is suppress one job in the batch until after a certain date. I know I can do it with an interval, but creating one time use interval just sounds like a bad idea. Hence why I was looking at the condition. But I don't see where I can see the value that is used by the condition for $starttime. Just what I can get from job run. Maybe I am not looking in the right place on how the condition was evaluated to get to the results like I can see for the run command on the job details. As such, I suspect I am not comparing what I think I am comparing.

[Ronald Jeninga]

Hi Dan,

good to hear from you!

Even if it is a little late: Happy New Year! :-)

Now to your issue.

The $*time parameters are in epoch if evaluated in a trigger context (originally) and in expressions (those were added later).

This allows halfway easy date arithmetic (e.g. if the job didn't finish 2 hours after start, trigger some notifier) but is cumbersome in your case because you'll have to find that magic number first.

The utility "date" is your friend, like in

$ date '+%s' -d '2026-01-26 00:00:00'
1769382000

And the condition

1769382000 < int($starttime)

or so, should evaluate to true from January 26th on.

Note that the job will be submitted nevertheless, but it will be disabled, which means that it'll not be executed and will terminate with the final exit state with lowest preference (usually SUCCESS).

Hope that helps, but if it doesn't work as expected, please tell me.

Best regards,

Ronald