This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every hour between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:
0 9-13 * * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every hour between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.”
What is a Cron Job & Crontab?
A cron job is a task that is scheduled to run at a specific time or interval. Cron jobs are commonly used to automate system maintenance or administration tasks, such as running backups or sending email reports.
To create or edit a cron job, users must first open the crontab file using a text editor. The crontab file contains instructions for the cron daemon, which is the program that actually executes the commands specified in the file. Each line in the crontab file represents a single task or command.
Cron Fields
Every cron job uses five fields. Here is an explanation of what each field does in this cron, which runs “every hour between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm“:
FUN FACT: When configuring a cron job, you can specify the minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week when it should run – this gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of when your task will be performed automatically!.
Use Cases
You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every hour between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm for several reasons, including:
- A daily report could be generated and emailed to the team every day at 10:00 am
- A backup of the database could be taken every day at 11:00 am
- Some maintenance task could be run every day at 12:00 pm
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 2 hours
- every 12 hours
- every 1 hour
- every 11 hours
- every hour between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm
- every hour between 12:00 am and 9:00 am
FUN FACT: Cron jobs are named after the Greek god of time, Chronos – so now you know where the name comes from!.
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned how to set up a cron job that runs every hour between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. Please share this page with friends and colleagues if you find it useful.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below.
If you are looking for cron jobs that run at certain minutes, hours, days, weekdays, or months, or if you are looking for miscellaneous cron jobs, then check out our relevant sections, or visit our cron job cheat sheet for a list of hundreds of popular cron jobs.
