I recently learned that crontab day-of-week specification can use English abbreviations like SUN-SAT in addition to numbers 1-7, so I’d like to share this.

crontab Can Specify Days Using English Abbreviations SUN-SAT

What I often struggled with in crontab notation was specifying “day of week.”

I often had to look up “When I specify number 1, is that Sunday or Monday?” and during my research, I discovered that you can use English abbreviations like SUN.

        <td>0-59</td>
        <td>, - * /</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Minutes</td>
        <td>YES</td>
        <td>0-59</td>

        <td>, - * /</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Hours</td>
        <td>YES</td>
        <td>0-23</td>
        <td>, - * /</td>

    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Day of month</td>
        <td>YES</td>
        <td>1-31</td>
        <td>, - * ? / L W<br clear="all">
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>

        <td>Month</td>
        <td>YES</td>
        <td>1-12 or JAN-DEC</td>
        <td>, - * /</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Day of week</td>

        <td>YES</td>
        <td>1-7 or SUN-SAT</td>
        <td>, - * ? / L #</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Year</td>
        <td>NO</td>

        <td>empty, 1970-2099</td>
        <td>, - * /</td>
    </tr>
</tbody>

Field Name	Mandatory	Allowed Values	Allowed Special Characters
Seconds	YES

For “Month,” it seems you can also use English abbreviations like JAN-DEC, but I think it’s easier to understand if you stick with numeric notation for this.

Reference Information

• 1-7 or SUN-SAT

That’s all from the Gemba.