Kata cron

2009, May 03 One min read

I’m currently in search for new ideas of programming katas for the coding dojo.

A small feature really impressed me in Google App Engine: the new cron feature uses plain english to define the frequency of cron jobs. Have you ever add to decode standard crontab syntax?

"0 0 12 * * ?" means "Fire at 12pm (noon) every day".
"0 15 10 ? * 6L" means "Fire at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month"

Which syntax do you prefer?

So here are two dojo ideas that I will try to develop using Ioke:

Easiest: translate “* * * * *” syntax to plain english
Harder: translate plain english to cron syntax