Hello All,
Hope u r doing fine.
I'm writing a shell script to ftp the latest file having pericular convention as 'ULTI_15072007043205.txt' on daily basis.
Now the date & timing of the file geleration isnt constant, so the file name daily varies as per the date & timing of generation.
Can anyone advice me how I can tackle with this?

Shilpa

You use could 'ls' to return you the names sorted by date.

then use the first one.

#! /bin/sh
#Do an ftp and get the list of filenames starting with ULT
ftp -ivn hostname <<INPUT >& out
user rakesh Welcome
ls ULT*
bye
INPUT

#Obtain the latest filename inside the variable filename using sort command
filename=`awk '{if($NF ~ "ULT") {print $NF}}' out | sort -r | sed -ne '1p'`


#Do ftp again and get the desired file
ftp -ivn hostname <<INPUT >& out
user rakesh Welcome
get $filename

the ls executed on ftp is different from our full fledged ls

My suggestion reading your query ...

REQUIRED_FILETYPE=UTIL_
...
cd ${DESIRED_DIR}
FILE=`ls -t ${REQUIRED_FILETYPE}* | sed '1q'`
echo ${FILE}
...
Then perform your outbound FTP.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Cameron

Thanks a lot to all, this really has helped a lot.....

Shilpa

Hi Cameron,

FILE=`ls -t ${REQUIRED_FILETYPE}* | sed '1q'`

I tried this,, it would not work, because the ls executed on ftp is not the same as the actual ls as mention in the previous mail.

i wished it would work, so that the work become little easier

here is the output if run ls and pipe its output to sed

ftp> ls -t UT* | sed '1p'
usage: ls remote-directory local-file
ftp>

RUV