Crontab Translator
Translate cryptic Cron schedule expressions into plain English. Understand exactly when your tasks will run.
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Applications & Real-World Examples
Essential for DevOps engineers, sysadmins, and developers managing scheduled tasks on Linux/Unix. Use it to: verify cron jobs before deployment, audit legacy crontabs, learn cron syntax interactively, and share verified schedules with your team via shareable URLs.
Cron Cheatsheet
Cron uses a 5-field format: Minute (0-59), Hour (0-23), Day of Month (1-31), Month (1-12), Day of Week (0-7, 0+7=Sun). Special characters: * (any), / (step, e.g. */5 = every 5), , (list, e.g. 1,15 = 1st & 15th), - (range, e.g. 1-5 = Mon-Fri), L (last), W (weekday), # (nth weekday, e.g. 1#2 = 2nd Monday), ? (any, Quartz cron). Quartz cron supports L, W, # and 6-field expressions with seconds; POSIX cron uses only */,- and 5 fields.
Fun Fact: The cron daemon was invented by Ken Thompson in 1975 for Version 7 Unix. The name comes from the Greek 'chronos' (time). A single misplaced asterisk once caused a multi-million dollar financial system to process overnight batch jobs at the wrong time for 3 years before being caught!
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