Question

I have a Perl script that needs to run following an annual schedule with specific dates and times of when to start and stop. I don’t believe crontab can handle this. Is there a Perl module (even a non-perl implementation would be fine) that can help me with this? If it helps, I m running this on a linux box.

Also, the schedule has only 15-20 aberrations (days on which the process must start and stop at a different time).

Answer 1

I usually find that the best way to handle this is to set up cron with an easy superset of the needed dates (every day, or every hour, whatever) and have the script itself determine if it’s the right time to run. If not, just exit before you do anything.