Timers allow you to execute commands repeatedly at fixed intervals, and also to specify a command to be executed later.

Timers have to mandatory attributes: an interval in seconds, that represents how often the timer is fired, and an action, that is the command that is executed. Just like in other places, the action can be a text that is sent to the MUD, or it can be something run with Perl.

It is possible to define timers that execute only a fixed number of times. This is the timer's repeat count. Whenever the timer is executed, this count is decreased, and when it reaches zero, the timer is disabled, and will only execute again if reenabled manually. A timer can also be temporary: in this case, when the repeat count reaches zero, it is deleted and not only disabled. A repeat count of -1 means that the timer is executed indefinitely.

A timer with a repeat count of one is executed only once. Since the first execution only happens interval seconds after it is defined, this allows you to define a command to be executed after some specified time. If it is marked as temporary, the timer will be deleted after it is run this one time.