Help interpreting a crontab job

Hi all,

I’m not sure if this is the correct area to ask this.
I have this crontab job */10 8-17 * * 1-5 fetchmail mailserver.
Now, the book says that in this example, every 10 minutes (*/10) between 8:00AM and 5:50PM (8-17), from Monday to Friday (1-5) the fetchmail command is run to fetch incoming emails.

My question is, why 5:50PM specifically?
Where in the crontab job would I be able to determine such times, anything other than 1 O’clock or 2 O’clock, etc…

Thank you

Hi
So every 10 minutes is the */10 part, which is the hour plus 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and (50+10 = 00 :wink: ) 00. Then add the final hour on 1700Hrs (5:00pm) plus the 10min jobs.