GNU bug report logs - #77535
timeout treats very short durations as `0`

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From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
Cc: 77535 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, nicolas <at> boichat.ch
Subject: bug#77535: timeout treats very short durations as `0`
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 01:08:43 -0700

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 2025-04-05 13:56, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> I'm going to apply the attached later to remove the libm dependency.
> It's just too much of a dependency for minimal functionality.

Thanks, agreed about the dependency. Still, 'timeout' (and, now that I 
think about it, 'sleep' and 'tail') should always wait for at least the 
time requested.

After thinking about it I installed the attached further patch, which 
addresses the problem in a different way without needing libm on 
GNU/Linux. Although we could tighten the bounds further in typical cases 
(by using the algorithm 'date' uses to parse seconds, if the string is 
of that form) I tried to keep it simple, as the main point is to not 
sleep for less than the time requested.

Floating point can be such a pain sometimes, even for simple things. 
(Read the cited paper and see....)

[0001-timeout-don-t-sleep-less-than-requested.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

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