cron in Mac OS X
By: Strauss K in macos Tutorials on 2011-02-03
cron is a utility in Mac OS X and other Unix-based operating systems that allows you to schedule jobs or commands to run automatically at specified times or intervals.
To use cron in Mac OS X, you can create a "cron job" by adding an entry to the crontab file, which is a configuration file that stores the list of jobs to be executed by cron. Each entry in the crontab file specifies a command or script to be executed, along with the schedule for when the command should be run.
To edit the crontab file on your Mac, you can use the following command in the Terminal:
crontab -e
This will open the crontab file in the default text editor for your Mac, allowing you to add or edit entries.
The basic syntax of a cron job entry is as follows:
* * * * * command
Here, the five asterisks represent the schedule for the job, in the following order:
- Minute (0-59)
- Hour (0-23)
- Day of the month (1-31)
- Month (1-12)
- Day of the week (0-6, where Sunday is 0)
For example, to schedule a job to run every day at 2:30 PM, you could use the following crontab entry:
30 14 * * * command
This will run the command at 2:30 PM every day.
You can also use other options to specify more complex schedules, such as running a job on specific days of the week, or at specific intervals. For more information on how to use cron and its various options, you can refer to the manual page by running the following command in the Terminal:
man cron
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