There is no "current terminal" when running from cron.

By default, cron sends an email containing output from the job. Your local mail subsystem delivers that to the file /var/spool/mail/$USER, and you can read it using mail, mailx, or your preferred local email client.

There's no particular reason why you couldn't get your cron job to write its output to a file in your home directory, for example like this:

* * * * *    date >$HOME/.current_date 2>&1

If you're running a GUI you can use notify-send to write messages in a pop-up on your screen. BUT it's not straightforward to do this from cron. Have a search around StackExchange for solutions to this sub-problem.

If you want to write to a tty you can indeed use something like echo hello, world >/dev/tty1. You would probably want to ensure that the right account was indeed logged on to /dev/tty1 before writing to it (this can be done by checking the ownership of the device, stat -c %U /dev/tty1). However, you would probably be better off using the write command. For example, to write to a user "roaima" you could do this:

* * * * *    echo hello from cron | write roaima >/dev/null 2>&1

There is no "current terminal" when running from cron.

By default, cron sends an email containing output from the job. Your local mail subsystem delivers that to the file /var/spool/mail/$USER, and you can read it using mail, mailx, or your preferred local email client.

There's no particular reason why you couldn't get your cron job to write its output to a file in your home directory, for example like this:

* * * * *    date >$HOME/.current_date 2>&1

If you're running a GUI you can use notify-send to write messages in a pop-up on your screen. BUT it's not straightforward to do this from cron. Have a search around StackExchange for solutions to this sub-problem.

If you want to write to a tty you can indeed use something like echo hello, world >/dev/tty1. You would probably want to ensure that the right account was indeed logged on to /dev/tty1 before writing to it (this can be done by checking the ownership of the device, stat -c %U /dev/tty1).

#!/bin/bash
#
me=roaima    # userid to write messages to

log()
{
    local tty owner
    for tty in $( who | awk -v me="$me" '$1 == me {print $2}' )
    do
        owner="$( stat -c %U "/dev/$tty" 2>/dev/null )"
        [[ "$me" = "$owner" ]] && echo "$@" >"/dev/$tty"
    done
}

# ...

log "hello, world"
log "this is a message for you to read RIGHT NOW"
exit 0

However, you might be better off using the write command. For example, to write to a user "roaima" on a logged in terminal you could do this:

* * * * *    echo hello from cron | write roaima >/dev/null 2>&1

There is no "current terminal" when running from cron.

By default, cron sends an email containing output from the job. Your local mail subsystem delivers that to the file /var/spool/mail/$USER, and you can read it using mail, mailx, or your preferred local email client.

There's no particular reason why you couldn't get your cron job to write its output to a file in your home directory, for example like this:

* * * * *    date >$HOME/.current_date 2>&1

And if you're running a GUI you can use notify-send to write messages in a pop-up on your screen. BUT it's not straightforward to do this from cron. Have a search around StackExchange for solutions to this sub-problem.

There is no "current terminal" when running from cron.

By default, cron sends an email containing output from the job. Your local mail subsystem delivers that to the file /var/spool/mail/$USER, and you can read it using mail, mailx, or your preferred local email client.

There's no particular reason why you couldn't get your cron job to write its output to a file in your home directory, for example like this:

* * * * *    date >$HOME/.current_date 2>&1

If you're running a GUI you can use notify-send to write messages in a pop-up on your screen. BUT it's not straightforward to do this from cron. Have a search around StackExchange for solutions to this sub-problem.

If you want to write to a tty you can indeed use something like echo hello, world >/dev/tty1. You would probably want to ensure that the right account was indeed logged on to /dev/tty1 before writing to it (this can be done by checking the ownership of the device, stat -c %U /dev/tty1). However, you would probably be better off using the write command. For example, to write to a user "roaima" you could do this:

* * * * *    echo hello from cron | write roaima >/dev/null 2>&1