Let’s face it, having the ability to schedule tasks to run in the background is just great! From backing up an SQL database, fetching / sending emails to running clean up tasks, analyzing performance, or even grabbing RSS feeds, cron jobs are fantastic!
Although the syntax of scheduling a new job may seem daunting at first glance, it’s actually relatively simple to understand once you break it down. A cron job will always have five columns each of which represent a chronological ‘operator’ followed by the full path and command to execute: