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answer: direct
beat: tooling
source: 1 article · updated: November 13, 2026
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What does */5 mean in cron?

A step value: every 5th unit of that field. In the minute field, */5 means minutes 0, 5, 10 and so on, every five minutes. The slash sets the step, the asterisk is the full range, and you can combine with a range such as 10-30/5.

Answered in

Cron Expressions and the Gotchas That Bite in Production

Five fields, four special characters, and a handful of traps: the OR rule, the tiny environment, silent output, overlapping runs and time zones.

Crashtech Editorial November 13, 2026 Developer Tooling

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