Hey, all.

So my cron is fairly long. And I don't make a point of memorizing it.
So if I want to add a new job, and ensure that it doesn't collide with
another job, I have to manually review the cron, think about it, find
an appropriate time, etc.

You'd think that since a cron file is a standard format, that some tool
would exist to read a cron file and populate a graphical calendar of
some sort, to produce something that's at least _kind_ of intuitive.

Does such a thing exist??

Hope so...

not sure about a calendar, but both websm and webmin have crontab pages
that make reading the crontab a little easier ..

my 2 cents anyhoo

Rgds
Mark Taylor

BD wrote:
> Hey, all.
>
> So my cron is fairly long. And I don't make a point of memorizing it.
> So if I want to add a new job, and ensure that it doesn't collide with
> another job, I have to manually review the cron, think about it, find
> an appropriate time, etc.
>
> You'd think that since a cron file is a standard format, that some tool
> would exist to read a cron file and populate a graphical calendar of
> some sort, to produce something that's at least _kind_ of intuitive.
>
> Does such a thing exist??
>
> Hope so...

The following (poorly written) perl script does something like that:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

if (@ARGV == 1)
{
open (CTF, "$ARGV[0]") or die "Cannot open crontab for $ARGV[0]:$!";
@lines = <CTF>;

foreach $line (@lines)
{
if (index($line, '#') != 0)
{
chomp $line;
(@fields) = split /\s+/,$line ;
if ($fields[3] eq '*')
{
$months='1';
for ($lcnt=2;$lcnt<13;$lcnt++)
{
$months .= ",$lcnt";
}
} else {
$months=$fields[3];
}
if ($fields[2] eq '*')
{
$days='1';
for ($lcnt=2;$lcnt<31;$lcnt++)
{
$days .= ",$lcnt";
}
} else {
$days=$fields[2];
}
if ($fields[1] eq '*')
{
$hours='0';
for ($lcnt=1;$lcnt<24;$lcnt++)
{
$hours .= ",$lcnt";
}
} else {
$hours=$fields[1];
}
if ($fields[0] eq '*')
{
$mins='0';
for ($lcnt=1;$lcnt<60;$lcnt++)
{
$mins .= ",$lcnt";
}
} else {
$mins=$fields[0];
}
$cmd = $fields[5];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[6] if defined $fields[6];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[7] if defined $fields[7];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[8] if defined $fields[8];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[9] if defined $fields[9];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[10] if defined $fields[10];
$cmd .= ' ' . $fields[11] if defined $fields[11];
(@mons) = split /,/,$months;
foreach $mon (@mons)
{
(@doms) = split /,/,$days;
foreach $dom (@doms)
{
(@hrs) = split /,/,$hours;
foreach $hr (@hrs)
{
(@mns) = split /,/,$mins;
foreach $mn (@mns)
{
$hkey = sprintf "%02d%02d%02d%02d",$mon, $dom, $hr,
$mn;
# print $hkey, ' ', $cmd, "\n";


if (exists $event{$hkey})
{
$event{$hkey} .= "\n" . $cmd;
} else {
$event{$hkey} = "\n" . $cmd;
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
# sort the hash by the key and print it
@m= ('Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep',
'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec');
@keys = sort { $a cmp $b } keys %event;
foreach $key (@keys)
{
printf "\n\n%s %s \@ %s:%s >> \n%s\n", $m[substr($key,0,2)-1],
substr($key,2,2), substr($key,4,2), substr($key,6,2), $event{$key};
}
} else
{
print "You must specify a crontab file\n";
}

> The following (poorly written) perl script does something like that:

Oh, thanks! I'll see what I can make of it.

I'm still in elementary school as far as scripting is concerned, or I'd
have taken something like that on myself. ;-)