Schedule a Python Script via Cron

A Shell script is a powerful tool for automating your Linux tasks. However, you might occasionally want to execute a Python script and schedule it via cron. Since Python is an object-oriented programming language, it allows you to write scripts that are not only powerful and sophisticated but also clean and efficient. Here’s how you can schedule it on cron.

To find out the full path of your Python interpreter, you can run:

which python3

This might output something like /usr/bin/python3, depending on your system. Once you have this path, prepend it to your Python script in the cron job:

0 23 * * * /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/python/script

Before running the script, ensure the script has a shebang line: Add this as the first line in your Python script if it’s not already there:

#!/usr/bin/python3

And make it executable by running the below command:

chmod +x /path/to/python/script

It’s easy, right? Go ahead and experiment with it in your environment!