*BSD News Article 50719


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From: marcus@ccelab.iastate.edu (Marcus I. Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Crontab and the % character
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 16:36:11 LOCAL
Organization: Iowa State University
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Message-ID: <marcus.225.0201FF80@ccelab.iastate.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: te134a.cce.iastate.edu
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #4]

I am running a Cron job using Crontab.  The problem:

I issue the command - stathtml `date +"%B %b"`
If I use the %'s by themselves then it interprets them as special control 
characters, but if I put a \ in front of each, the command is interpreted 
literally (i.e. "\%B \%b").  Since \ is apparently not working quite right, is 
there a different character I'm supposed to be using?  I look in man cron and 
man crontab but neither even mentioned the problem.  

I would greatly appreciate email responses (in addition to posts to this group 
if you think others might have the same question).  With classes and work I 
get to read the group infrequently enough I miss messages.  Any help is 
appreciated.


--------------------------------------------------------------
Marcus I. Ryan          |*Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice 
Asst. SysAdmin, CCE Labs| doggie!' until you can find a rock.
Iowa State University   |-------------------------------------
shad@iastate.edu        |*Diplomacy - Letting someone else 
(515) 294-0715          | have things your way.
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