Cron executes while partly ignoring trigger

There's a problem with my crontab

I set

*/5 * * * * /home/money/relaunch.sh

in crontab -e

in relaunch.sh is

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/pgrep -l -x xyz || /home/money/a.sh && /home/money/xyz.sh

However, when applying this crontab it launches new instance of xyz.sh every 5 minutes regardless of

/usr/bin/pgrep -l -x xyz ||

How do I get this right?

In your case, you have 2 sequential conditional operators.

script1 || script2 && script3

The key is to think of the problem backward. Script3 will run when the exit code it receives is 0. Let's analyze the two possible outcomes of running script1.

• Case1. Script1 is successful - it produces exit code 0; script2 is never run; script3 receives the exit code 0 from script1 and runs.
• Case2. Script1 is unsuccessful - it produces exit code 1 (or other non-zero code); script2 is run and exits with code 0; script2 runs again.

I don't know what you are trying to do, but I can see two scenarios depending on when you want script3 to run.

1. You want to run script3 only if script2 is successful. Then you should use a subshell:

    script1 || (script2 && script3)
   

2. You want to run script2 if script1 fails and script3 if script1 is successful. Then you just change the places of 2 and 3:

    script1 && script3 || script2