Parse cron

Explain a five-field Vixie cron expression in plain language.

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ToolCron Parser
Input
Output
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Preview

How it works

The five fields are read in minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and weekday order, then lists, ranges, steps, and numeric names are expanded into a human-readable schedule. A sixth year field is rejected so the explanation stays tied to one cron dialect.

  • Five fields and Sunday as 0 follow traditional Unix crontab.

Worked example

Parse Daily Midnight Cron
Explain a cron expression that runs daily at midnight
Input
											0 0 * * *
Output
												Cron: 0 0 * * *

Schedule: at minute 0, at hour 0

Fields:
  Minute:       0 (0-59)
  Hour:         0 (0-23)
  Day of Month: * (1-31)
  Month:        * (1-12)
  Day of Week:  * (0-6, Sun=0)

When to use this

Deployment reviews, runbooks, and CI configuration audits explain cron schedules.

Edge cases

  • A six-field expression is rejected as a different dialect.
  • 1-5 in the weekday field is described as Monday through Friday.
  • */15 is described as every fifteen minutes.

References