Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!cmcl2!seismo!vrdxhq!rlgvax!hadron!jsdy
From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Crontab problem on 4.2
Message-ID: <371@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Apr-86 10:45:14 EST
Article-I.D.: hadron.371
Posted: Tue Apr 15 10:45:14 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Apr-86 03:19:01 EST
References: <93600014@siemens.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 17
Summary: '%' => NL on some systems

In article <93600014@siemens.UUCP> yan@siemens.UUCP writes:
>	5 23 * * * /usr/local/bin/dateV '+%m%d' > /usr/adm/yesterday
>		[ blank line ]
>		m
>		d
>	Why ??

In some versions of cron (including yours, FLAMERS NOTE: this means
not including others), the '%' character gets mapped into a newline
character when the command line is run.  I do not remember off-hand
whether (a) this is escaped with a back-slash; (b) this is escaped
by doubling the '%'; (c) it cannot be escaped.  In the last case,
and perhaps in any case, you can put the "dateV '+%m%d'" line in a
shell command file and call  t h a t  from crontab.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}