Question

In the commandline I am able to do

cp htlog.out test.$(date '+%m%d%Y')

but when I try to crontab it like this:

37 17 * * 1-5 cd the/dir && cp htlog.out test.$(date "+%m%d%Y")

It fails with the following message from the CRON DAEMON:

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

And I do have endlines after the command. What is wrong with that crontab entry?

Answer 1

% in crontab have a special meaning, it should be backslashed, so:

37 17 * * 1-5 cd the/dir && cp htlog.out test.$(date "+\%m\%d\%Y")

From man 5 crontab :

A “%” character in the command, unless escaped with a backslash
* (), will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to the command as standard input.