SPJOB

Syntax

SPJOB jobname,priority (Toolkit II, TinyToolkit pre v1.10 and THOR only) or

SPJOB jobnr,tag,priority (Toolkit II and THOR only) or

SPJOB jobID,priority or

SPJOB jobnr,priority(TinyToolkit pre v1.10)

Location

Toolkit II, THOR XVI, TinyToolkit (pre v1.10), BTool

The specified job (described by either its jobname, its job number and tag, or its job identification number) is set to the given priority (which should be in the range 0 to 127 to maintain compatibility with Minerva). A priority of zero will ensure that the job waits until it is given a higher priority by another job.

NOTE 1

It is possible that only the second syntax works. Get an update!

NOTE 2

Before v1.10 of TinyToolkit, this toolkit included the same command but with an incompatible syntax - this version has been renamed SP_JOB.

MINERVA NOTES

Although on other ROMs, a priority higher than 127 can be assigned to a job, on Minerva, the permitted priority range is actually -128…127 (if a priority is stated to be higher than 127, you must subtract the difference between this number and 256 from 0 to get the negative priority).

The idea behind these negative priorities is that they are for ‘background tasks’ which will only run when no tasks with a positive priority are running. However, the effect is slightly more complex because these negative priorities are split into eight levels, each of which can have jobs running with priorities equivalent to -1 to -15. A job in one level will not run whilst a job in a higher level is running, however within each level each job will get a different amount of processor time depending on their priorities {a job with a lower priority (eg. -15) will get more processing time than a job with a higher priority (eg. -1)}.

Level

Priority Range

Overall Value

0

-1 … -15

-1 … -15

1

-1 … -15

-16 … -31

2

-1 … -15

-32 … -47

3

-1 … -15

-48 … -63

4

-1 … -15

-64 … -79

5

-1 … -15

-80 … -95

6

-1 … -15

-96 … -111

7

-1 … -15

-112 … -127

WARNING

The supplied parameters are not checked to see what you are trying to do, which means that you can use this command to set the priority of SuperBASIC to zero, preventing further command entry.

CROSS-REFERENCE

SJOB suspends a job, REL_JOB releases it. RJOB and KJOB remove a specific job, KILL and KJOBS remove all jobs except the main SuperBASIC interpreter. See also SP_JOB, PRIO, PRIORITISE.