Re: SECONDS=0 does not reset SECONDS, or I'm missing something

[Steve Amerige]

On 6/4/2020 6:14 AM, Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri wrote:
>         #!/usr/local/bin/bash -x
>
>         for name do
>                 SECONDS=0
>                 rm -r -f "$name"
>                 [[ SECONDS -gt 0 ]] && sleep "$SECONDS"
>         done
>
> What I noticed was that the script would go to sleep for a second
> every second, even if the deletion of directories was quick.  This
> indicates that SECONDS=0 didn't properly reset the SECONDS timer.

Note that your script doesn't have a semicolon after "for name":

for name; do
...
done

Note that you're not using parameter expansion for SECONDS.
It should have been $SECONDS. You could have alternative used:

(( SECONDS > 0 ))

in which case the omission of the parameter expansion syntax is permitted.

Also, as a side note, if your script were running with set -o errexit,
the conditional idiom would fail because it doesn't handle the false case.
Better:

if (( SECONDS > 0 )); then
   sleep $SECONDS
fi