A cleared schedule means not scheduled, and every reader says so
A schedule is invisible until it fires or fails to, so the component that decides a trigger is due and the one that reports when it will next run must never describe the same stored value differently. Blank-means-inactive is the reading every comparable scheduler uses.
The rule
Normative: this is the rule
- A trigger whose cron expression is the empty string is not scheduled: it must not fire, and a report of when it will next run must say it has none.
- Empty means exactly empty: an expression that merely looks unfilled, such as
0, is a malformed expression and must be reported as invalid rather than as unset, so an operator is never told to fill in a field that is already filled in. - Whichever component decides that a trigger is due and whichever reports its next run must reach the same conclusion about the same stored schedule.
Rule identifiers are permanent and are never renumbered. Each implementation publishes its own standing against these rules; this specification does not.spec 1.0-draft · CRON-1 · changed in spec 1.0