Cron and perl command...??

wscreate

I use the following command to automatically update some include files in my PHP directory.

=========

perl -p -i.old -e 's#/phpdir/index.php#/php2dir/index.php#g' *

I run this from a Linux shell and I run it from within the directory that contains the files that I want to be updated.

Thus, if I

cd /home/username/www/php

I then run the command

and it replaces any instance of "/phpdir/index.php" with "/php2dir/index.php" within any file in the current directory.

It works great. I want to run this command from cron once per day. I know how to use cron pretty well, I use it quite often. However, I am having trouble figuring out how to tell cron how to specify this particular command to be run from within the /home/username/www/php directory.

I looked at "perl --help" to see if the arguements could specify the directory, but none worked.

Can any one help me here...?

Thanks.

mmilano

first you must put your execution script in it's own executable file:

for this example we will name this script "update"

update:

#!usr/bin/sh
$ cd /home/username/www/php
$ perl -p -i.old -e 's#/phpdir/index.php#/php2dir/index.php#g' *

now you make this script executable:

$ chmod u+x update

now you can setup the crontab to execute this script once per day:

to pull up your crontab use this:

$ crontab -e

it should open up your text editor. then simply add the line:

$ 0 0 */1 * * /home/username/path_to/update

i'm about 90% sure that this cron will work for your application.

good luck

wscreate

Thanks mmilano.

I had to make a couple of adjustments, but you set me on the right path. I ended up with an executable named "update" like so...

============
#!/bin/sh
cd /etc/proftpd
perl -p -i.old -e 's#/php/index.php#/php2/index.php#g'

rm -r -f .old*

I placed the executable in /bin and then setup a crontab like this

============

6 /bin/update

It works perfectly. Thank you again.