Better method to append to output crontabs - sh

Question

So i have simple shell commands to ping websites to retrieve data about said websites.
For example one of my pinging.sh looks like this:
ping -R -c 120 blar.org.cn >> pingdata.txt
ping -R -c 120 another.net >> pingdata.txt
But then my crontabs look like this:
7 * * * ./pinging.sh >> pingdata.log
The pingdata.log doesn't output. Is it best to do it through the crontab or through the script? I assumed the crontab would be better because it would cover the entire script rather than having to write it out multiple times.

Answer 1

You need to indicate the full path of your script in the cronjob, together with the binary running it.
For example:
7 * * * * /bin/sh /home/you/pinging.sh >> /home/you/pingdata.log
Note also you are just adding 4 parameters to the cronjob, whereas you need at least 5:
+---------------- minute (0 - 59)
| +------------- hour (0 - 23)
| | +---------- day of month (1 - 31)
| | | +------- month (1 - 12)
| | | | +---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7)
| | | | |
* * * * * command to be executed
You can test your cron syntax with Crontab guru (---> http://crontab.guru/).

Answer 2

First, the executable must be provided as full path in cron.
Example:
7 * * * * /bin/bash /path/to/pinging.sh
Second, create a wrapper script for pinging.sh >> pingdata.log and add that to crontab.
Third, your crontab entry is wrong. There must be 5 fields whereas your's have 4 (maybe that's a typo ?)