From: Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@...>
Date: 2011-11-09T07:09:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Parsing data with ruby

Well this is a bit of a hack but just to simply parse the lines you could use:

a = "10,25,40,55 * * * * /some/cron/here > /dev/null 2>&1\n30 */4 * *
* /some/cron/here"

a.split(/\n/).each do |line|
  if line =~ /^(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(.*)$/
    output = Array.new
    output << $6
    output << "?"
    output << ($1 == "*" ? 'N' : 'Y')
    output << ($2 == "*" ? 'N' : 'Y')
    output << ($3 == "*" ? 'N' : 'Y')
    output << ($4 == "*" ? 'N' : 'Y')
    output << ($5 == "*" ? 'N' : 'Y')

    p output
  end
end

Which will output:

["/some/cron/here > /dev/null 2>&1", "?", "Y", "N", "N", "N", "N"]
["/some/cron/here", "?", "Y", "Y", "N", "N", "N"]

Note that I left the '?' for the number of servers as that is your
problem - Think of it as an exercise for the reader :)

Also you might also need to match the Paul Vixie extensions for cron
such as @hourly and @daily