Question 1

What is the order of fields in a cron expression?

Accepted Answer

Standard cron: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), day of week (0-7, where 0 and 7 are Sunday). Some systems (Quartz) add a seconds field at the start and a year field at the end.

Question 2

How do I run a cron job every 30 seconds?

Accepted Answer

Standard cron does not support seconds. The smallest interval is 1 minute. To run every 30 seconds, create two cron entries: one at the normal time and one with a 30-second sleep: * * * * * sleep 30 && /your/command.

Question 3

What timezone do cron jobs use?

Accepted Answer

By default, cron uses the system timezone. Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Vercel) typically use UTC. Always check your platform documentation. Some crontab implementations support CRON_TZ=America/New_York at the top of the file.

Command	Description
* * * * *	Every minute
/5 * * *	Every 5 minutes
/15 * * *	Every 15 minutes
0 * * * *	Every hour (at minute 0)
0 /2 * *	Every 2 hours
0 0 * * *	Every day at midnight
0 9 * * *	Every day at 9:00 AM
0 9 * * 1-5	Weekdays at 9:00 AM (Mon-Fri)
0 0 * * 0	Every Sunday at midnight
0 0 1 * *	First day of every month at midnight
0 0 1 1 *	January 1st at midnight (yearly)
30 4 * * *	Every day at 4:30 AM

Command	Description
*	Field: matches any value
,	Field: list separator (e.g., 1,3,5) `0 9 * * 1,3,5 = Mon, Wed, Fri at 9 AM`
-	Field: range (e.g., 1-5) `0 9 * * 1-5 = Mon through Fri at 9 AM`
/	Field: step/interval (e.g., /10) `/10 * * * * = every 10 minutes`

Command	Description
@yearly or @annually	Shortcut: run once a year (0 0 1 1 *)
@monthly	Shortcut: run once a month (0 0 1 * *)
@weekly	Shortcut: run once a week (0 0 * * 0)
@daily or @midnight	Shortcut: run once a day (0 0 * * *)

Cron Syntax Cheatsheet

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