You could call the same program using different names, one name when run from cron, anothe r when run interactively. Put a test in the program to check which name is was invoked as and take action accordingly. Here's a snippet: #!/usr/bin/perl if ( $0 eq "xx" ) { print "program called from cron\n"; } else { print "program run manually\n"; } Call the program as "xx" from the crontab entry. "xx" can be a symlink to the real program name. Scot On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 20:16:16 -0600, Steve Swantz <aintboeingaintgoing at gmail.com> wrote: > I'm sure this will be easy for someone, but I'm not finding it now... > > I have a perl program that normally runs by cron, but occasionally > manually. I want to handle the output differently depending on how it > is run. Yes, I could add a flag to the arguments, but I seem to > remember there being a more fundamental way to determine at runtime. > Anyone know? > > Thanks, > Steve