Re: continuation character in cron jobs

[David Liontooth <liontooth@cogweb.net>]

Rick Pasotto wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 21, 2007 at 12:03:30PM -0700, David Liontooth wrote:
>> 
>> I'd like to use the continuation character \ in a cron job, but I get an
>> error when I do.
>> 
>> I use "crontab -e" to edit the crontab and have this sort of thing:
>> 
>> 30 5 * * *      script varable variable \
>> variable-text
>> 
>> when I try to save, I get this:
>> 
>> crontab: installing new crontab
>> "/tmp/crontab.kZ7WHF/crontab":122: bad minute
>> errors in crontab file, can't install
>> 
>> Does anyone know if there's a way to get cron to accept a continuation
>> character?
> 
> man (5) crontab
> 
>    The ``sixth'' field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to
>    be run.  The entire command  portion  of  the line, up to a newline
>    or % character, will be executed by /bin/sh or by the shell specified
>    in the SHELL variable of the crontab file.  Percent-signs (%) in the
>    command, unless escaped with backslash (\), will be  changed  into
>    newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to
>    the command as standard input. There is no way to split a single
>    command line onto multiple lines, like the shell's trailing "\".
> 

Thanks! Really appreciate the info.

I searched the man pages for 'continuation' but missed this. Too bad!

Cheers,
Dave