Very Computer

Just wondered if someone can help me out.  I looking for a
script that would automatically place an entry such as a #
into the crontab to comment out a specific daily task from a
list of pre-defined dates.

What do you think?? Might be a pretty lengthly task... Oh
well...just thought I'd ask.

Thanks... Pete

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crontab -l | sed '/task/s/^/#/' | crontab

Someone once posted that some versions of crontab can't deal with both
reading and writing in the same pipeline (perhaps due to locking the
crontab file).  In that case you'll need a temp file:

crontab -l > $TEMPFILE
sed '/task/s/^/#/' $TEMPFILE | crontab
rm $TEMPFILE

--

Genuity, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
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specific details.

If you were a gladiator in olden days, I bet the inefficiency
of how the gladiator fights were organized and scheduled
would just drive you up a wall.

                     -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

#<START>Daily Job
* * * * * /path/to/job
#<END>Daily job

Then its a matter of using a simple sed script:

/^#<START>Daily Job/,/^#<END>Daily Job/s/^/#/

turns it off

/^#<START>Daily Job/,/^#<END>Daily Job/s/^#//

turns it on

This is especially useful where there are a number of crontab
lines.

Adam