The -e option of the crontab command opens the current user’s crontab in an editor. The editor used is determined by the environment variables VISUAL or EDITOR. If neither of these variables is set, the default editor is vi. The user can edit the crontab file to add, modify, or delete cron jobs, which are scheduled commands or scripts that run at a specified time or interval. The crontab file has the following format:
minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week command
Each field can be a number, a range, a list, or an asterisk (*), which means all possible values. The command can be any valid shell command or script. For example, the following crontab entry runs the backup.sh script every day at 2:30 AM:
30 2 * * * /home/user/backup.sh
To save and install the crontab file, the user needs to exit the editor. The crontab command will check the syntax of the file and report any errors. If the file is valid, it will be installed and the cron daemon will execute the cron jobs according to the schedule. References:
crontab(1) - Linux manual page
FreeBSD Handbook: 11.6. Scheduling Tasks
