Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm lost what you are trying to achieve. On the files you are searching for, are you just after matching them on a date? I've very confused.

Your DATEN, DATE2 etc. values will be the string for the date in the format Mmm dd YYYY where dd is padded with a leading space if required. This matches the output from ls -l when a file is older than 6 months, but a truss gives me no output.

Perhaps we should start again with the logic.

Are you looking for files that match a date-stamp? There are easier ways with the find command.

How many files must you find in a particular directory to regard it as a success? I'm guessing that it could be zero, 1, 2, 3 or 4.

Is there a reason that you compare every file that matches *.txt one at a time? It reads the directory for every file you match. it would be quicker to read the directory for the files you want or read it once and scan the output. What is your matching criteria?


I'm so confused


Robin

The output of truss command is as follows:

Code:

DATEN=$(perl -e 'print scalar(localtime(time -  0 * 24 * 60 * 60)), "\n";' |awk '{print $2,$3,$5}')

Jun 11 2014 -this is the output of truss command

This date is supposed to be matched against files in each directory:

Dir1
file1--checks truss date against file date
file2
file3

Dir2
filea
fileb
filec

What happens is that it checks every file and so it prints out a message for every file. What I want it to do is print one message for each directory. The message should say "Not found" for any directory that does not have at least one file that matches the date in truss command.

But it prints a message for each file that does not match, because it is not written correctly.

I really don't want to use the find command, this is an experiment with truss and loops for myself .

So is the date part of the file name or the last modified time?

If it's part of the file name try variations on:-

Code:

if [ -f "*${DATEN}*" ] || [ -f "*${DATE2}*" ] || [ -f "*${DATE3}*" ] || [ -f "*${DATE4}*" ]
then
    echo "Directory $PWD has at least one file name matching the dates."
else
   echo "Directory $PWD does not contain a file name matching the dates requested."
fi

The logic will be true if a file name containing the first or second or third or fourth date exists in the current directory.


If you are looking for a file modified on the correct date, then that's tricker, however you could try variations on:-

Code:

find . -type f -mtime -4 | xargs echo "Directory $PWD contains the following:-"

You may need to add a -prune clause if there are subdirectories you don't want to search down.

Using commands like ls -l to show the directory of files including their last modification date/time is problematic because the date format for files modified within the last 6 months is Mmm dd HH:Mi

If you don't want to use find then I'd have to ask why. It's probably the right tool for the job. Never screw something in with a hammer. If you want to go a bit Heath-Robinson then I'm out.

Of course, if I've missed the point then let me know.

What is the point of the truss command anyway? I'm most confused over that I think.


Am I getting anywhere yet?


Robin

No! It is not! That is the output of a perl command; not the truss command that I asked for:

Code:

truss -vlstat -tlstat ls -l $f 2>&1

when f is set to the name of a text file in the current directory? PLEASE SHOW US THE OUTPUT FROM THE ABOVE COMMAND!

From the commands following truss in your pipeline we know that the output from truss has to be at least four lines.

And you still have not told us what you are trying to do! WHAT CHECK ARE YOUR TRYING TO PERFORM BETWEEN FILES IN A DIRECTORY AND YOUR FOUR DATES?If you can't clearly explain what you are trying to do in unambiguous terms, we can't help you.

Thanks all, for your suggestions. I finally did make this work. I still used truss, and needed some awk as well, but I got it to do what I wanted by carefully inspecting each line of the script.

If you will show us the output you get from running truss and show us your current working script, there is a good chance we can help you make it more efficient.

It will also help other people reading this thread in the future figure out how you solved your problem.