Provides a parser and evaluator for unix-like cron expressions. Cron
expressions provide the ability to specify complex time combinations such as
"At 8:00am every Monday through Friday" or "At 1:30am every
last Friday of the month".
Cron expressions are comprised of 6 required fields and one optional field
separated by white space. The fields respectively are described as follows:
Field Name | Allowed Values | Allowed Special Characters | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Seconds |
0-59 |
, - * / |
||
Minutes |
0-59 |
, - * / |
||
Hours |
0-23 |
, - * / |
||
Day-of-month |
1-31 |
, - * ? / L W |
||
Month |
1-12 or JAN-DEC |
, - * / |
||
Day-of-Week |
1-7 or SUN-SAT |
, - * ? / L # |
||
Year (Optional) |
empty, 1970-2199 |
, - * / |
The ‘’ character is used to specify all values. For example, ""
in the minute field means "every minute".
The ‘?’ character is allowed for the day-of-month and day-of-week fields. It
is used to specify ‘no specific value’. This is useful when you need to
specify something in one of the two fields, but not the other.
The ‘-’ character is used to specify ranges For example "10-12" in
the hour field means "the hours 10, 11 and 12".
The ‘,’ character is used to specify additional values. For example
"MON,WED,FRI" in the day-of-week field means "the days Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday".
The ‘/’ character is used to specify increments. For example "0/15"
in the seconds field means "the seconds 0, 15, 30, and 45". And
"5/15" in the seconds field means "the seconds 5, 20, 35, and
50". Specifying ‘*’ before the ‘/’ is equivalent to specifying 0 is
the value to start with. Essentially, for each field in the expression, there
is a set of numbers that can be turned on or off. For seconds and minutes,
the numbers range from 0 to 59. For hours 0 to 23, for days of the month 0 to
31, and for months 1 to 12. The "/" character simply helps you turn
on every "nth" value in the given set. Thus "7/6" in the
month field only turns on month "7", it does NOT mean every 6th
month, please note that subtlety.
The ‘L’ character is allowed for the day-of-month and day-of-week fields.
This character is short-hand for "last", but it has different
meaning in each of the two fields. For example, the value "L" in
the day-of-month field means "the last day of the month" - day 31
for January, day 28 for February on non-leap years. If used in the
day-of-week field by itself, it simply means "7" or
"SAT". But if used in the day-of-week field after another value, it
means "the last xxx day of the month" - for example "6L"
means "the last friday of the month". You can also specify an offset
from the last day of the month, such as “L-3” which would mean the third-to-last
day of the calendar month. When using the ‘L’ option, it is important not to
specify lists, or ranges of values, as you’ll get confusing/unexpected results.
The ‘W’ character is allowed for the day-of-month field. This character
is used to specify the weekday (Monday-Friday) nearest the given day. As an
example, if you were to specify "15W" as the value for the
day-of-month field, the meaning is: "the nearest weekday to the 15th of
the month". So if the 15th is a Saturday, the trigger will fire on
Friday the 14th. If the 15th is a Sunday, the trigger will fire on Monday the
16th. If the 15th is a Tuesday, then it will fire on Tuesday the 15th.
However if you specify "1W" as the value for day-of-month, and the
1st is a Saturday, the trigger will fire on Monday the 3rd, as it will not
‘jump’ over the boundary of a month’s days. The ‘W’ character can only be
specified when the day-of-month is a single day, not a range or list of days.
The ‘L’ and ‘W’ characters can also be combined for the day-of-month
expression to yield ‘LW’, which translates to "last weekday of the
month".
The ‘#’ character is allowed for the day-of-week field. This character is
used to specify "the nth" XXX day of the month. For example, the
value of "6#3" in the day-of-week field means the third Friday of
the month (day 6 = Friday and "#3" = the 3rd one in the month).
Other examples: "2#1" = the first Monday of the month and
"4#5" = the fifth Wednesday of the month. Note that if you specify
"#5" and there is not 5 of the given day-of-week in the month, then
no firing will occur that month. If the ‘#’ character is used, there can
only be one expression in the day-of-week field ("3#1,6#3" is
not valid, since there are two expressions).
The legal characters and the names of months and days of the week are not
case sensitive.
NOTES: