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Cron Expression Parser

How Cron Parsing Works

Cron expressions are parsed field by field and converted to human-readable descriptions.

  1. 1

    Split into fields

    The expression is split into five whitespace-separated fields.

  2. 2

    Parse each field

    Each field is parsed to determine the set of matching values (ranges, steps, wildcards).

  3. 3

    Generate description

    The parsed values are combined into a natural language description of the schedule.

  4. 4

    Compute next runs

    Starting from the current time, the next execution times are calculated.

FAQ

What is a cron expression?
A cron expression is a string of five fields (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week) that defines a schedule for running tasks. It is used by cron, the Unix job scheduler, and many cloud services.
What do the five fields mean?
The five fields are: minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), and day of week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). Special characters like *, /, -, and , provide flexibility.
What does */5 * * * * mean?
It means "every 5 minutes." The */5 syntax in the minute field means "every 5th value," so the task runs at 0, 5, 10, 15, ... minutes past each hour.

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