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.