crontable OR conditions

Question

Crontable parameters seem to function as 'ands' conditions. So the example

0 9-5 * * 1-5

Runs when the conditions are met "minute is zero AND hour is between 9 and 5 AND day is between monday and friday".

What I'd like is an 'or' function, so I can say "run monday to friday OR the 8th day of the month". Does such a thing exist?

I realise you could add two entries, but with lots of entries it adds something to forget.

Answer 1

I was gonna say: use , (comma). From man 5 crontab:

Lists are allowed.
A list is a set of numbers  (or  ranges)  separated  by  commas.
Examples:  "1,2,5,9","0-4,8-12".

But your case is slightly more complicated, and you can take advantage of this feature:

Note: The day of  a command's execution can be specified by two fields day
of month, and day of week. If both fields are restricted (i.e., aren't *),
the command will be run when either  field matches the current time.
For example, "30  4  1,15  *  5" would cause a command to be run at 4:30 am
on the 1st and 15th of each month, plus every Friday.

So in your case, you can write 0 9-5 8 * 1-5. That would run your command every 8th of the month and every day from Monday to Friday.

Another solution is to use a test (man bash, section CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS, and man date):

# Run on every second Saturday of the month:
   0 4 8-14 * *    test $(date +%u) -eq 6 && echo "2nd Saturday"