Why is the "at" command on Windows XP not behaving as expected?

Question

On Windows XP I'm trying to add a job like this:

at 17:07 /every:s dir

I expect dir to be executed every Saturday at 17:07, however I don't see anything happens in the command line window.

Here is the log:

D:\temp>at 17:07 /every:s dir
Added a new job with job ID = 1

D:\temp>time/t
05:06 PM

D:\temp>date/t
Sat 10/02/2010

D:\temp>at
Status ID   Day                     Time          Command Line
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Error   1   Each S                  5:07 PM       dir

D:\temp>time/t
05:08 PM

D:\temp>

What am I missing ?

Answer 1

From the Microsoft documentation page for the 'at' command,

To run a command that is not an executable (that is, .exe) file,
precede the command with cmd /c to load Cmd.exe as follows:

cmd /c dir > c:\test.out 

Also as their example shows,
if you want the 'dir' output to be usable, you should redirect it to some file.

---

Further, like the comment on your question describes, the documentation page notes,

Schtasks is a more powerful superset command-line scheduling tool and includes all the functionality found in the 'at' command-line utility. Use schtasks instead of at for all command-line scheduling tasks.