Google Apps Script, Loops vs time driven trigger for cell formatting?

Question

I am new to google script but have experience with VBA. I am trying to make a cell in a google sheet flash, or highlight white then red every 3 seconds. I am trying to determine the best way to do this. I've thought of three options so far. The first is to have an endless loop that changes the cell format, I can write that code but I am not sure if there is a limit to how long script will run the loop. Will it have an error after a certain period of time? I am not concerned about the resource drain. The loop technically wouldn't be endless since it will have a condition that is met eventually and stop flashing, but it could theoretically run forever.

The second option I was looking into was a time driven trigger. From what I can tell, time driven triggers can only run as frequently as once/minute. Is this true or can I use a trigger to change the cell format every 3 seconds?

The last options was a mix of the first two. Should I use a time driven trigger that is triggered every 5 minutes. Within that trigger have a loop that changes the cell format for 5 minutes, then exits the loop before the trigger is fired again and it continues formatting the cell?

This is also based on conditional formatting, so there will be times when the cell is not flashing. I was going to use an OnEdit trigger to check for a condition in a cell then if that is true, start the time driven trigger.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

Answer 1

This will be practically impossible to achieve.

A loop will run for a certain time but there is a maximum execution time of 6 minutes in Google-Apps-Script so the script will die after this time.

Triggers have indeed a resolution of 1 minute so it won't do the job either...

Any combination of these two will probably make you reach the maximum computing time for a day (1 hour if I remember well)

Unless someone finds a trick that I don't know I would say this is just not doable.

You could achieve this is a webapp or even in a sidebar but not in a spreadsheet.