Technical Task - Cron Expression
Parser
Write a command line application or script that parses a cron string and expands each field
to show the times at which it will run. You may use whichever language you feel most
comfortable with. The assignment must have an automated test suite.
Please do not use any existing cron parser libraries for this exercise. While using pre-built
libraries is generally a good idea, we want to assess your ability to create your own!
You should only consider the standard cron format with five time fields (minute, hour, day of
month, month, and day of week) plus a command, and you do not need to handle the special
time strings such as "@yearly". The input will be on a single line.
The cron string will be passed to your application as a single argument.
~$ your-program ＂d＂
The output should be formatted as a table with the field name taking the first 14 columns and
the times as a space-separated list following it.
For example, the following input argument:
*/15 0 1,15 * 1-5 /usr/bin/find
Should yield the following output:
minute 0 15 30 45
hour 0
day of month 1 15
month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
day of week 1 2 3 4 5
command /usr/bin/find
You should spend no more than three hours on this exercise. If you do not have time to
handle all possible cron strings, an application that handles a subset of them correctly is
better than one that does not run or produces incorrect results. In the interview, you will be
asked to extend the solution with additional features and tests, so please have your
development environment ready in the way you like it and ready for screen sharing.
You should consider your project reviewer a new team member to whom you are handing
the project over. Provide everything you feel would be relevant for them to ramp up quickly,
such as documentation or a README with instructions for running your project and its tests
in a clean Mac OS X/Linux environment.