rbj@icst-cmr.arpa (root) (04/23/86)
From: yan%siemens.uucp@BRL.ARPA Crontab problem on 4.2 I have the following entry in the crontable: 5 23 * * * /usr/local/bin/dateV '+%m%d' > /usr/adm/yesterday "dateV" is the 4.2 "date" command taken from SystemV. I expected to see: MMDD (where: MM - month, DD - day) in /usr/adm/yesterday, however, I get the following when I "cat" /usr/adm/yesterday: [ blank line ] m d Why ?? Thanks in advance. Unfortunately, you are the victim of a cruel joke. The percent signs serve as delimiters and mutate into newlines which create input for the command. Almost no one uses this feature. The effect is as if you ran the command: /usr/local/bin/dateV + << EOF > /usr/adm/yesterday m d EOF I don't know why the `m' and the `d' were inserted in the output tho. (Root Boy) Jim Cottrell <rbj@cmr> "One man gathers what another man spills"