Dozr: A flexible sleep-like command-line utility

dozr extends the standard sleep command. It pauses execution for a fixed duration, until a specific time of day, or for a duration sampled from a statistical distribution.

Features

• Simple Duration Waits: Pause for a fixed duration (e.g., 5s, 100ms).
• Distribution-Based Waits: Pause for a duration sampled from a variety of statistical distributions, including:
  • Normal
  • Exponential
  • Log-Normal
  • Pareto
  • Uniform
  • Triangular
  • Gamma
• Time-Based Waits: Pause until a specific time of day (e.g., 22:30:00).
• Alignment: Align the wait to the next even interval (e.g., 1m, 30s).
• Jitter: Add a random duration of jitter to the wait.
• Probabilistic Waits: Wait only with a certain probability.
• Verbose Output: Display a progress bar with the time remaining.

Installation

Install dozr from crates.io using cargo:

cargo install dozr

Usage

dozr is a flexible replacement for the standard sleep command.

dozr vs. sleep

sleep takes a single duration argument (e.g., sleep 5). The table below highlights key differences:

Feature	sleep	dozr
Basic Duration	sleep 5 (seconds only)	dozr d 5s (supports s, ms, m, h, etc.)
Distribution-based	No	Yes (Normal, Exponential, Log-Normal, Pareto, Uniform, Triangular, Gamma)
Time-based Wait	No	Yes (dozr at 22:30)
Alignment	No	Yes (dozr a 1m)
Jitter	No	Yes (dozr d 10s -j 1s)
Probabilistic Wait	No	Yes (dozr d 30s -p 0.5)
Verbose Output	No	Yes (dozr d 10s -v)

Basic Usage

Wait for a fixed duration:

# Wait for 5 seconds
dozr d 5s

Distribution-Based Waits

Sample a wait from a Normal distribution with a mean of 10 seconds and a standard deviation of 2 seconds:

# Wait for a duration sampled from a Normal distribution
dozr n 10s 2

Time-Based Waits

Wait until 10:30 PM:

# Wait until 10:30 PM
dozr at 22:30

Other Options

Add up to 1 second of random jitter to a 10-second wait:

# Wait for 10 seconds with up to 1 second of jitter
dozr d 10s -j 1s

Wait 30 seconds with a 50% chance of waiting:

# Wait for 30 seconds with a 50% probability
dozr d 30s -p 0.5

Display a progress bar while waiting:

# Wait for 10 seconds with a progress bar
dozr d 10s -v

Command-Line Arguments

Main Commands

Full Command	Alias(es)	Arguments	Example
duration	d	<TIME>	dozr d 5s
normal	n	<MEAN> <STD_DEV>	dozr n 10s 2.5
exponential	e	<LAMBDA>	dozr e 0.5
log-normal	ln	<MEAN> <STD_DEV>	dozr ln 1s 0.5
pareto	par	<SCALE> <SHAPE>	dozr par 1.0 2.0
uniform	u	<MIN> <MAX>	dozr u 1s 10s
triangular	t	<MIN> <MAX> <MODE>	dozr t 0.0 10.0 5.0
gamma	g	<SHAPE> <SCALE>	dozr g 2.0 1.5
align	a, ali	<INTERVAL>	dozr a 1m
at	(none)	<HH:MM[:SS]>	dozr at 22:30

Global Options

Full Option	Short	Value	Description
--jitter	-j	<TIME>	Adds a random amount of time up to <TIME>. Not applicable to align or at.
--probability	-p	<FLOAT>	The chance (0.0 to 1.0) that the wait will actually occur.
--verbose	-v	[TIME]	Shows progress. Can take an optional update interval (e.g., -v 1s).
--help	-h	(none)	Displays the help message for the command.
--version	-V	(none)	Displays the application version.

License

dozr is licensed under the MIT License.