I am trying to using pipe (|) with ! (not) operator to list all the other files except the latest two and I am using the following command.

$ ls -ltr *.lst|!(tail -2)
ksh: 20050211180252.lst: cannot execute

but it is trying to execute the file returned by tail -2. I am able to do that in 4 steps

1) ls -ltr *.lst > listfile
2) numberoflines=`wc -l | cut -d" "`
3) ((numberoflines = numberoflines - 2))
4) head -$numberoflines > final_list.

Are there any Unix gurus who could help me write the above commands using pipe facility. I am using Korn shell.

thanks in advance

Try this:


ls -ltr *.lst|tail -r|tail +3|tail -r

i do like this ...

this is the actual pseudocode for the script I am developing

log files are created by timestamp, so need to extract unique time stamps and save in a list file.. EXCEPT the latest two, then I need to archive those files in an Archive folder (moving). so that only the latest two remains in the .LOG folder.

so I am doing. (awk '{print substr($9,1,14)} as filename is of 14 char.)

cd $LOGDIR
ls -ltr *.log |awk '{print substr($9,1,14)}'|sort -u|!(tail -2) > filenameslist

I tried the following command suggested by one of the guru.. but it is throwing me an error.

ls -ltr *.log |awk 'print substr($9,1,14)}'|sort -u|awk '{if (NR >3) print $0}' > filenameslist

Thanks a lot guys for the valuable thougts.. can any body have a better Idea.

challenge is to get it done using pipe.. I mean in one line

Thanks to all the guru's. but I thought is there a way to use
!(tail -2)..

can I avoid Awk for the second time Bhargav.. thanks in advance..

why use awk? just use ls -lt|tail +4 and you are there.