This defines a date dependency for a node. There can be multiple date dependencies. The European format is used for dates, which is: dd.mm.yy as in 31.12.2012. Any of the three number fields can be expressed with a wildcard * to mean any valid value. Thus, 01.*.* means the first day of every month of every year.
Currently, you cannot specify a range of values for any of the three number fields in a date, See "day" for a way to specify the first seven days.
task x # Run the task twice a month date 1.*.* # month, on 1st and 15th date 15.*.* |
Because ecFlow was designed with ECMWF suites in mind, the date is a very important notion. ecFlow defines the time using clocks. A clock is an attribute of a suite. Different suites can have different clocks. There are two kinds of clocks:
Once a suite is complete, it is repeated automatically, with the next date. The value of the date is contained in the ecFlow variable ECF_DATE, and the value of the time is in ECF_TIME. ECF_CLOCK contains other information such as the day of week. A job should always use the ecFlow variables, and not directly access the system date.
If a hybrid clock is defined for a suite, any node held by a date dependency will be set to complete at the beginning of the suite, without the node ever being despatched. Otherwise the suite would never complete.