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Cron symbols, explained
Short guides to the characters that trip people up. Every example is checked by our cron engine.
?The question mark (?) in Quartz cronThe ? means "no specific value".LThe L (last) character in Quartz cronL stands for "last".WThe W (nearest weekday) character in Quartz cronA number followed by W means "the weekday nearest to that day of the month".#The # (nth weekday) character in Quartz cronIn the day-of-week field, day#n means "the nth occurrence of that weekday in the month", such as the second Tuesday./Step values (/) in cron expressionsThe slash means "every n units".- ,Ranges (-) and lists (,) in cron expressionsA hyphen makes an inclusive range and a comma separates values.secThe seconds field in Quartz and Spring cronQuartz and Spring put seconds first, giving six fields.yearThe year field in cron expressionsQuartz has an optional seventh field for the year, and AWS EventBridge has a required sixth field.MONDay and month names in cron expressionsMost cron dialects accept three-letter names for days and months.