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I'm setting up a cron job to suspend and wake a server at certian times.

I'm using two commands. One to be run from mondays to thursdays:

rtcwake -m mem -t $(date +%s -d "08:00")

And another one to be run on fridays:

rtcwake -m mem -t $(date +%s -d "monday 08:00")

I wonder if it's possible to make this separation unnecessary. If date could understand a statement like next weekday 08:00, it'd simplify things a lot.

I wasn't able to find if this is actually possible or what syntax should I use.

I basically want to avoid my server waking up on saturdays and sundays.

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  • Have you considered having two separate cron jobs? – Jeff Schaller♦ Aug 9 '18 at 19:12
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You may want to try 

date +%s -d"$(( ( $(date +%w)==5 )?3:1 ))days 8:00"

EDIT: to answer your comment: date +%w yields the day of week, which then is evaluated by a "conditional operator" (expr?expr:expr): if expr1 evaluates to TRUE, evaluate and use expr2, else expr3. So, on Friday, we have day 5, and run date +%s -d"3days 8:00, on the other days date +%s -d"1days 8:00.

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    Note that in a cron job specification, the % character has to be escaped as \%. – Kusalananda♦ Aug 9 '18 at 10:09
  • Hmm - yes, thanks - but not in his/her question above... – RudiC Aug 9 '18 at 10:13
  • "I'm setting up a cron job"... – Kusalananda♦ Aug 9 '18 at 10:14
  • Thanks! Could you explain a bit how does this code work? – unfa Aug 9 '18 at 10:18

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