Provided by: libschedule-cron-events-perl_1.94-1_all 
NAME
Schedule::Cron::Events - take a line from a crontab and find out when events will occur
SYNOPSIS
use Schedule::Cron::Events;
my @mon = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);
# a crontab line which triggers an event every 5 minutes
# initialize the counter with the current time
my $cron1 = new Schedule::Cron::Events( '*/5 * * * * /bin/foo', Seconds => time() );
# or initialize it with a date, for example 09:51:13 on 21st June, 2002
my $cron2 = new Schedule::Cron::Events( '*/5 * * * * /bin/foo', Date => [ 13, 51, 9, 21, 5, 102 ] );
# you could say this too, to use the current time:
my $cron = new Schedule::Cron::Events( '*/5 * * * * /bin/foo', Date => [ ( localtime(time()) )[0..5] ] );
# find the next execution time
my ($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $month, $year) = $cron->nextEvent;
printf("Event will start next at %2d:%02d:%02d on %d %s, %d\n", $hour, $min, $sec, $day, $mon[$month], ($year+1900));
# find the following occurrence of the job
($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $month, $year) = $cron->nextEvent;
printf("Following event will start at %2d:%02d:%02d on %d %s, %d\n", $hour, $min, $sec, $day, $mon[$month], ($year+1900));
# reset the counter back to the original date given to new()
$cron->resetCounter;
# find out when the job would have last run
($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $month, $year) = $cron->previousEvent;
printf("Last event started at %2d:%02d:%02d on %d %s, %d\n", $hour, $min, $sec, $day, $mon[$month], ($year+1900));
# see when the job would have next run at a point in time
$cron->setCounterToDate(0, 18, 1, 26, 9, 85); # that's 26th October, 1985
($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $month, $year) = $cron->nextEvent;
printf("Event did start at %2d:%02d:%02d on %d %s, %d\n", $hour, $min, $sec, $day, $mon[$month], ($year+1900));
# turn a local date into a Unix time
use Time::Local;
my $epochSecs = timelocal($sec, $min, $hour, $day, $month, $year);
print "...or that can be expressed as " . $epochSecs . " seconds which is " . localtime($epochSecs) . "\n";
Here is a sample of the output produced by that code:
Event will start next at 0:45:00 on 28 Aug, 2002
Following event will start at 0:50:00 on 28 Aug, 2002
Last event started at 0:40:00 on 28 Aug, 2002
Event did start at 1:20:00 on 26 Oct, 1985
...or that can be expressed as 499134000 seconds which is Sat Oct 26 01:20:00 1985
Note that results will vary according to your local time and timezone.
DESCRIPTION
Given a line from a crontab, tells you the time at which cron will next run the line, or
when the last event occurred, relative to any date you choose. The object keeps that
reference date internally, and updates it when you call nextEvent() or previousEvent() -
such that successive calls will give you a sequence of events going forward, or backwards,
in time.
Use setCounterToNow() to reset this reference time to the current date on your system, or
use setCounterToDate() to set the reference to any arbitrary time, or resetCounter() to
take the object back to the date you constructed it with.
This module uses Set::Crontab to understand the date specification, so we should be able
to handle all forms of cron entries.
METHODS
In the following, DATE_LIST is a list of 6 values suitable for passing to
Time::Local::timelocal() which are the same as the first 6 values returned by the builtin
localtime(), namely these 6 numbers in this order
• seconds
a number 0 .. 59
• minutes
a number 0 .. 59
• hours
a number 0 .. 23
• dayOfMonth
a number 0 .. 31
• month
a number 0 .. 11 - January is *0*, December is *11*
• year
the desired year number *minus 1900*
new( CRONTAB_ENTRY, Seconds => REFERENCE_TIME, Date => [ DATE_LIST ] )
Returns a new object for the specified line from the crontab. The first 5 fields of
the line are actually parsed by Set::Crontab, which should be able to handle the
original crontab(5) ranges as well as Vixie cron ranges and the like. It's up to you
to supply a valid line - if you supply a comment line, an environment variable setting
line, or a line which does not seem to begin with 5 fields (e.g. a blank line), this
method returns undef.
Give either the Seconds option or the Date option, not both. Supply a six-element
array (as described above) to specify the date at which you want to start.
Alternatively, the reference time is the number of seconds since the epoch for the
time you want to start looking from.
If neither of the 'Seconds' and 'Date' options are given we use the current time().
resetCounter()
Resets the object to the state when created (specifically resetting the internal
counter to the initial date provided)
nextEvent()
Returns a DATE_LIST for the next event following the current reference time. Updates
the reference time to the time of the event.
previousEvent()
Returns a DATE_LIST for the last event preceding the current reference time. Updates
the reference time to the time of the event.
setCounterToNow()
Sets the reference time to the current time.
setCounterToDate( DATE_LIST )
Sets the reference time to the time given, specified in seconds since the epoch.
commandLine()
Returns the string that is the command to be executed as specified in the crontab -
i.e. without the leading date specification.
ERROR HANDLING
If something goes wrong the general approach is to raise a fatal error with confess() so
use eval {} to trap these errors. If you supply a comment line to the constructor then
you'll simply get back undef, not a fatal error. If you supply a line like 'foo bar */15
baz qux /bin/false' you'll get a confess().
DEPENDENCIES
Set::Crontab, Time::Local, Carp. Date::Manip is no longer required thanks to B Paulsen.
MAINTENANCE
Since January 2012 maintained by Petya Kohts (petya.kohts at gmail.com)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2002 P Kent
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.