cron behavior

will willg at bluesock.org
Mon Dec 31 15:37:35 EST 2001


On Mon, 31 Dec 2001, John Abreau wrote:
> 
> Yes, I ran into this same problem 15 years ago when I wanted to
> use cron to send out monthly reminders for BCS meetings.
> Unfortunately, this is indeed the "correct" behavior for cron; the
> day-of-week field is inherently broken by design. I've never really
> understood the rationale for it, as this seriously limits cron's 
> flexibility.

There are a series of Cron substitutes.  Anyone have experience with them 
and this sort of issue?  I'm wondering if the substitutes have a different 
method of scheduling that enables them to more adequately handle this sort 
of thing.  I know with backups and various other business-process sorts of 
thing, the "fourth monday" thing happens a lot.  So I'd be kind of 
surprised to find that no one has solved it short of shim scripting.


-- 
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