sky hates software: Cron

• From: Arthur Bergman
  Date: 14:25 on 02 Oct 2003
  Subject: Cron
  
  Hi,
  
  I hate cron.
  
  Reason I hate cron is because it has a very awful non friendly 
  specification system.
  
  Why cannot we move into the 21th century with some nice specification 
  for cron like things.
  
  Oh I know it exists, but it is never installed everywhere.
  
  HATE
  
  Arthur
  
  
  

• From: peter (Peter da Silva)
  Date: 15:05 on 02 Oct 2003
  Subject: Re: Cron
  
  > I hate cron.
  
  Me too.
  
  > Reason I hate cron is because it has a very awful non friendly 
  > specification system.
  
  Reason I hate it is because if you type "crontab" by itself you're
  hosed.
  
  > Why cannot we move into the 21th century with some nice specification 
  > for cron like things.
  
  s/specification/editor/
  
  crontab(1) biting you again.
  
  Time to write that script I keep meaning to.
  
  
  

• From: collver1
  Date: 15:30 on 02 Oct 2003
  Subject: Re: Cron
  
  On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 09:05:38AM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
  > > Reason I hate cron is because it has a very awful non friendly 
  > > specification system.
  > 
  > Reason I hate it is because if you type "crontab" by itself you're
  > hosed.
  
  $ crontab
  crontab: usage error: file name must be specified for replace
  usage:  crontab [-u user] file
          crontab [-u user] [ -e | -l | -r ]
                  (default operation is replace, per 1003.2)
          -e      (edit user's crontab)
          -l      (list user's crontab)
          -r      (delete user's crontab)
  
  Must be a different cron.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Ben
  
  

• From: peter (Peter da Silva)
  Date: 16:24 on 02 Oct 2003
  Subject: Re: Cron
  
  > Must be a different cron.
  
  Indeed. Here's the original:
  
  crontab - Submits a schedule of commands to cron
    crontab [file]
    crontab -l|-v|-r|-e [username]
  
  With no file it reads from stdin.
  
  The right fix would be to make the default behaviour "list".
  
  
  

• From: Gavin Estey
  Date: 15:42 on 02 Oct 2003
  Subject: Re: Cron
  
  On Thursday, October 02, 2003 10:05 AM, Peter da Silva
  <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: 
  > 
  > Time to write that script I keep meaning to.
  
  I find Sean M. Burke's crontab2english a savior from the pain of crontab:
  
  http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/S/SB/SBURKE/crontab2english_0.71.pl
  
  Gavin.
  
  

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