What's the difference between 'Day' and 'Weekday' in launchd StartCalendarInterval?

Question

I'm working with launchd to run some automated tasks, and I was wondering what the difference is between 'Day' and 'Weekday'.

According to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1361809 there is a 'subtle' difference that can cause launchd to misbehave.

Ultimately, I'd like to have a plist that runs every weekday (Mon - Fri) at 8am, but I don't know how to get the cron equivalent of

0 8 * * 1-5

Forrest

I can only imagine that day = {Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat} and weekday = {Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri}... – Dennett

Also, that's a two-year-old thread. – Dennett

But developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/… specifies: Day <integer> The day on which this job will be run. Weekday <integer> The weekday on which this job will be run (0 and 7 are Sunday). So do Day and Weekday just have different integer values for days? It's certainly not clear to me from the documentation. – Forrest

Answer 1

Day is the day of the month.

Weekday is the day of the week (0 and 7 == Sunday).

For you, you need:

<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>1</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>2</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>3</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>4</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>5</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
</array>

Not quite as elegant as cron...

Lefty

Answer 2

try this too. Working for me!

     <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>

    <dict>

            <key>Minute</key>

            <integer>00</integer>

            <key>Hour</key>

            <integer>22</integer>

            <key>Weekday</key>

            <integer>12345</integer>

    </dict>

Gilstrap

Under 10.9 I get: The interval for key "Weekday" is not between 0 and 7 (inclusive) In the Console :( – Hertzfeld

This does not work. See: apple.stackexchange.com/a/249452/242297 – Unstop

Answer 3

You should be able to use hyphens to specify ranges as well:

<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>Weekday</key>
        <integer>1-5</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>8</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
</array>

I didn't test this though. (Source: http://www.launchd.info/)

Faultfinder

This does not work with launchd. The linked website offers information for a proprietary product called LaunchControl that allows the user to specify intervals in a "cron-like" syntax. See "Cron-style specifications" section on the "Configuration" tab of the page: "Some intervals are very tedious to specify in launchd. [...] A quick example: You want to run a program every five minutes between 20:00 and 23:00. In launchd you have to list all 36 matching timestamps [...] LaunchControl allows you to generate this list from the equivalent cron-style specification [...]" – Unstop