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Tools

Cron Decoder

For developers

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What a cron expression means in plain words.

Format: minute hour day month weekday

How to read a cron line

Five space-separated fields, each for one unit of time. An asterisk means “any value”.

Field 1Minutes, 0 to 59
Field 2Hours, 0 to 23. Server time, not your local time
Field 3Day of month, 1 to 31
Field 4Month, 1 to 12
Field 5Day of week, 0 to 6, where 0 is Sunday

Ready-made schedules

The most common patterns, usable as they are.

*/5 * * * *Every five minutes. Good for polling a job queue
0 * * * *On the hour. Currency rates, stock synchronisation
0 3 * * *Daily at three in the morning. The classic backup slot
0 4 * * 1Every Monday at four. Weekly reports and log rotation
0 0 1 * *Midnight on the first of each month

Why a cron job silently fails

Server time is not your time Many hosts run on UTC. A job set for three in the morning fires at six local time. Check the server timezone before you schedule.
Relative paths Cron does not run the command from the script folder. Give the full path to both the interpreter and the file.
Day of month plus day of week With both fields set, the job runs if either matches, not both. A frequent source of surprises.
Overlapping runs If the script takes longer than the interval, copies pile up and overwhelm the server. Such jobs need a lock while running.
No logging Without redirecting output to a file you will never learn why a job died. Add logging from the start, not after the first incident.

Decode a cron expression online

Cron expressions are terse but easy to get wrong: five fields, asterisks, slashes, commas — and a task fires at the wrong time. Enter an expression and the decoder instantly translates it into human language: "*/5 * * * *" becomes "every 5 minutes", and "0 9 * * 1" — "every Monday at 09:00". Field format: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.

This saves you from classic mistakes: mixing up field order, using 0 instead of 7 for Sunday, running a heavy backup every minute instead of daily. Check every new cron before adding it to the server — one minute of checking saves hours of cleanup.

FAQ

What is cron?
Cron is a task scheduler on Linux servers. A cron expression of five fields defines the schedule: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
How to read a cron expression?
An asterisk (*) means "any value". For example, */5 * * * * — every 5 minutes, 0 9 * * 1 — every Monday at 9:00.
Why check cron?
To avoid schedule mistakes: a wrong expression can run tasks too often (load) or at the wrong time. The decoder shows a clear description.
Where is cron used?
For automated tasks: backups, mailings, cache clearing, data sync. BB STUDIO configures cron tasks for client sites.
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