> > Now, the other half (less urgent): Am I missing something in the
> > crontab(5) man-page?  Or the cron(1)?  While the behavior can be guessed
> > with a little thought (or deterimed from the source---or found by
> > consulting a mailing list), I cannot see that it is documented. Should I
> > send-pr it?  Or does someone with write access want to fix it
> > off-the-cuff?  (^&
> 
> crontab(5) has an example section; none of the examples show the
> ampersand.

Right, but that doesn't tell you anything about this.  (Or is that your
point, and I'm just beating a dead horse?  (^&)


> +++ crontab.5   Sat Feb 17 20:36:36 2001
> @@ -136,6 +136,13 @@
>  .PP
>  The ``sixth'' field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be
>  run.
> +The commands ran by
> +.IR cron (8)
> +do not need to be followed by an
> +ampersand;
> +.IR cron (8)
> +does not wait for the command to terminate before proceeding to
> +execute another command.

This addition would be a Good Thing in my eyes.  (Though I think that
s/ran/run/ reads a little better.)  Also, since (in most cases), one
doesn't really care whether the process is exectued synchronously, it
comes a little out of the blue to start the sentence by saying ``The
commands [...] do not need [...] an ampersand [...]''.

I might rephrase that to read more like:

The commands run by
.IR cron (8)
are always run asynchronously;
.IR cron (8)
does not wait for the command to terminate before proceeding to
execute another command.


> +++ cron.8      Sat Feb 17 20:30:52 2001
 [...]
> +.PP
> +.I cron
> +does not wait for a command to finish before executing the
> +next command.
 [...]

Looks good to me.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu