cron-explain

Parse cron expressions into human-readable descriptions and calculate next execution times

Features

• Parse standard 5-field cron expressions (minute hour day month weekday)
• Support extended 6-field format with seconds field
• Support 7-field format with year field
• Validate cron syntax and provide helpful error messages with field position
• Convert cron to natural language in English (e.g., 'At 2:30 AM, only on Monday')
• Calculate and display next 5 execution times by default
• Support --next flag to customize number of execution times shown (1-100)
• Handle special characters: * (any), , (list), - (range), / (step), ? (no specific value)
• Support special strings: @yearly, @monthly, @weekly, @daily, @hourly, @reboot
• Colorized output with syntax highlighting for readability
• JSON output mode with --json flag for programmatic use
• Verbose mode with --verbose flag showing field-by-field breakdown
• Support reading from stdin for pipeline integration
• Exit codes: 0 for valid, 1 for invalid syntax, 2 for runtime errors

How to Use

Use this project when you need to:

• Quickly solve problems related to cron-explain
• Integrate go functionality into your workflow
• Learn how go handles common patterns

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/KurtWeston/cron-explain.git
cd cron-explain

# Install dependencies
go build

Usage

./main

Built With

• go

Dependencies

• github.com/spf13/cobra
• github.com/fatih/color

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.