CRUD cron entries from Perl script

Is it possible to control user crontab entries from a perl script that is run by that user? Let's say I want to read, write and delete entries.

I've looked at Schedule::Cron and can't quite understand it. Am I correct in assuming it has nothing to do with the actual crontab for each user?

Also, with regard to Schedule::Cron, is it correct that it is simply a program that must always be running on the system? So if system is turned off and on again, then it will not run (unlike cron - unless, of course the program is kicked off by a different system scheduler, like Cron; in that case, what's the point of it?)

Ideally, I'd like to do the same thing on Windows systems with task scheduler.

The key is that the script that controls scheduling behaviour (whether that is the crontab itself or something behaving like the crontab) needs to be able to exit, and the cron entries should remain. This is because the script will be called within an event loop that controls a GUI, so if the user exits the GUI, the program needs to exit, but the cron job that the user created needs to remain. Likewise, if the GUI restarts (and the event loop restarts), it should be possible to开发者_高级运维 edit and delete scheduled tasks.

(EDIT: Schedule::At for one off jobs looks the business on *Nix systems. Still struggling with Windows however - the modules Win32::AdminMisc and Win32:TaskScheduler no longer look to be maintained)

The most promising option I can find is Config::Crontab.

Config::Crontab - Read/Write Vixie compatible crontab(5) files

Feel free to try searching yourself at the CPAN search site.

There are solutions fow Windows in the Win32 namespace (Win32::TaskScheduler). Out top of my head I don't know of anything that would work cross-platform.