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I am looking for a word that describes an amount of time in days from a certain starting point, after which some action should happen.

timeout cannot be used, as it does not clarify that the amount of time is in days (and in computer terminology, often specifies an amount of time to wait in seconds or milliseconds). I was thinking about interval, but interval is often used to describe a timeout that repeats.

I was also thinking about deadline, but that seems to indicate that something should have been happened before the given amount of days, instead of after.

The word will be used in a computer system, to name a setting that specifies the amount of days to wait befor sending a reminder-email to customers.

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3 Answers 3

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If you're just looking for how to present it in a UI, I'd use "Send reminder email after ___ days".

If you're looking to describe that setting, you could refer to it as the reminder interval. Reminder period or reminder deferral would also work.

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In this context, a timeout is simply:

A specified period of time that will be allowed to elapse in a system before a specified event is to take place, unless another specified event occurs first .... - wikipedia

There is no restriction to the length of the timeout. Here's an example of a timeout of 5 days:

Each time a user accesses SharePoint Online, the timeout value is reset to 5 days. - Microsoft

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Estimated Time of Arrival or Expected Time of Arrival would be a good fit. If you want to send a remainder e-mail after 7 days and 6 hours, the ETA would be 7d6h. It has been commonly used in BitTorrent.

Estimated Time of Arrival

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  • Thank you for your answer! The problem with ETA lies in the Estimated. It would make sense if it was a prediction, but as it is a setting that can be edited and (assuming the computer system does not break down), will definitely be executed at that time.
    – Qqwy
    Apr 15, 2016 at 5:54
  • @Qqwy On the same line, if the computer system does not break down, then ETA will be accurate and the value of the ETA will be the actual arrival time. I gave this answer based on that assumption only.
    – Nagarajan Shanmuganathan
    Apr 15, 2016 at 5:57

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