yan@siemens.UUCP (04/05/86)
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. =============================================================== Yan Nabedrik Siemens RTL {inhp4|astrovax|allegra|dshvax}!siemens!yan Princeton, NJ
jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao) (04/15/86)
In article <93600014@siemens.UUCP> yan@siemens.UUCP writes: > 5 23 * * * /usr/local/bin/dateV '+%m%d' > /usr/adm/yesterday > [ blank line ] > m > d > Why ?? In some versions of cron (including yours, FLAMERS NOTE: this means not including others), the '%' character gets mapped into a newline character when the command line is run. I do not remember off-hand whether (a) this is escaped with a back-slash; (b) this is escaped by doubling the '%'; (c) it cannot be escaped. In the last case, and perhaps in any case, you can put the "dateV '+%m%d'" line in a shell command file and call t h a t from crontab. -- Joe Yao hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}