How to test wp_cron?

This is kind of a stupid question…

I scheduled a action to run every hour:

if(!wp_next_scheduled('my_hourly_events'))
  wp_schedule_event(time(), 'hourly', 'my_hourly_events');

add_action('my_hourly_events', 'the_function_to_run');

function the_function_to_run(){
   echo 'it works!'; 
}

How can I test if this works without waiting an hour? 🙂

I tried adding wp_clear_scheduled_hook('my_hourly_events'); before this code and adding wp_cron() after, but I don’t see my function running…

edit:

ok, I added a trigger_error() inside my function, checked out the apache error log, and it’s there 🙂

So now I’m even more confused:

• How can the wp-cron run in the background? because apparently that’s what happens if I see no output…

• this doesn’t seem to work in a object context; why?

My favorite plugin for that is Core Control which has very nice module for display of what is going in the cron – which events are set up, when are they next firing, etc.

On getting your hands dirty level see _get_cron_array(), which returns internal stored data for cron events (top level of keys are timestamps).