Re: [PLUG] Utility to evaluate/debug crontab files

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 04 May, 2005, at 12:09, Sandhu, Suchindra wrote:
> Is there a way to evaluate crontab files ? Whenever I edit my crontab,
> I keep getting error messages such as:
>
> <snip>
> Your "crontab" on nets-dev1
   ... much white space deleted ...
> 	unexpected end of line
> This entry has been ignored.
> </snip>
>
> Then I hack around whitespaces and newlines till I rectify the error.
> It would be nice to have a utility to debug such errors in a visually
> helpful way.

What are you using for an editor?

The implication is that you are NOT using an editor (like emacs or vi), 
but rather a word processor of some sort. (Or possibly some GUI based 
editor and doing cut and paste operations.)

Any Unix/Linux script is one line per line ... not one paragraph per 
line which is the way virtually every word processor formats -- 
especially anything from the Windows or Mac world.

"Line wrap" is an extreme evil for scripts. Make certain it is turned 
off, or that you otherwise know you are working with a wrapped line.

Personally, I use emacs and set the line length to 80 chars. That way 
lines display on the screen and I use continuation syntax if I need 
more than one line for a command.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
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