Difference between cron, crontab, and cronjob?

cron crontab cron-task
Leo Galleguillos picture Leo Galleguillos · Feb 6, 2014 · Viewed 15k times · Source

Technically speaking, what is the difference between a cron, crontab, and cronjob?

From what I can gather, cron is the utility on the server, crontab is a file which contains the time intervals and commands, and cronjob is the actual command (or file/script which contains commands).

Is this correct?

Answer

Marc B picture Marc B · Feb 6, 2014

cron is the name of the tool, crontab is generally the file that lists the jobs that cron will be executing, and those jobs are, surprise surprise, cronjobs.

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