(Vixie cron is named after Paul Vixie, the creator of BIND and other Unix goodness.)
Instead of the first five fields, one of eight special strings may appear:
string meaning
—— ——-
@reboot Run once, at startup.
@yearly Run once a year, “0 0 1 1 *”.
@annually (same as @yearly)
@monthly Run once a month, “0 0 1 * *”.
@weekly Run once a week, “0 0 * * 0″.
@daily Run once a day, “0 0 * * *”.
@midnight (same as @daily)
@hourly Run once an hour, “0 * * * *”.