Two Open Source Software Alternatives to Cron

“A few weeks ago, we looked at using Corntab to make it easier
to create entries for cron. What if you want to avoid cron
altogether? You can, thanks to several cron alternatives.

“Hcron

“One alternative is hcron, a GPLv2 alternative to cron. Written
by John Marshall, hcron has several advantages over cron. First,
hcron’s event definitions are much easier to read and are more
expressive.

“But hcron also addresses a few problems cron didn’t anticipate,
leaving aside its arcane syntax. When you run a cron job, you must
kludge together something in the job itself or in the command you
pass to cron to send an email when a job is completed. The hcron
utility is expressly designed to allow for an email when the job is
run.”

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