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Cron to English Translator

A client-side utility to translate standard Crontab schedules into human-readable text.

Here are the most frequently used schedules for system administration and web scraping tasks.

Frequency Cron Expression Use Case
Every Minute * * * * * Uptime checks, real-time sync.
Every 5 Minutes */5 * * * * Data fetching, stock updates.
Every 15 Minutes */15 * * * * Database backups, heavy syncs.
Every Hour 0 * * * * Hourly logs, cleanup tasks.
Daily (Midnight) 0 0 * * * Daily reporting, cache clearing.

How to Read Cron Expressions (Syntax Guide)

If you are trying to debug a schedule manually, it helps to understand how the daemon reads the file. A standard Crontab entry consists of 5 fields separated by spaces.

Field Breakdown

Position Field Range Allowed Special Characters
1 Minute 0-59 * , - /
2 Hour 0-23 * , - /
3 Day of Month 1-31 * , - / ? L W
4 Month 1-12 * , - /
5 Day of Week 0-6 * , - / ? L #

(Note: In the Day of Week field, 0 represents Sunday. In the Hour field, 0 represents Midnight).

Meaning of Special Characters

  • Asterisk (*): Matches any value (e.g., "every minute").
  • Comma (,): A list of values (e.g., 1,15 runs on the 1st and 15th).
  • Hyphen (-): A range of values (e.g., 1-5 runs Monday through Friday).
  • Slash (/): A step value (e.g., */10 runs every 10th unit, like 0, 10, 20...).
  • Question Mark (?): No specific value (used in some systems to ignore Day of Month vs Day of Week).
  • L (L): "Last" (e.g., 5L means the last Friday of the month).
  • W (W): "Weekday" (e.g., 15W means the nearest weekday to the 15th).
  • Hash (#): "Nth" day (e.g., 5#3 means the 3rd Friday of the month).