Question

I have the following command in my cron file:

*/15 * * * * NODE_ENV=production ~/bin/node ~/myapp/app.js > /var/log/nodelog/nodelog_`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M"`.log

The command itself runs OK when copied and pasted into the bash shell, but the cron job keeps sending the following error message:

/bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching ``'
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Why does it run OK from the command line, but fail in the cron job? Is there a difference between the syntax expected on the command line and that expected in cron?

Answer 1

From crontab manpage:

Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped with backslash
(\), will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the
first % will be sent to the command as standard input.