Could someone advise of the code to get a filename to have the date of creation in it?

I've the code to dump an SQL DB to a file, but would like it to have the date it.

Also, what is the code to get cron to execute a PHP (or perl) script at a set time?

Thanks,
Ed Ludlow

For building a name with a datestamp, you can refer to what I have tried, quoted below, in the past in my auto build script. Just use the date command to formulate a date string:

TODAY=`date +%Y%m%d`

mysql_$TODAY.sql

THanks for the reply. I've made the today variable in the way you say, but when it makes the backup file, it simply returns the file name as "backup_forum-date + %d-%m-%Y.sql"!!

What's going wrong?

Thanks,
Ed

In the code snippit that cgkihong posted, he is using back quotes( `). Be sure you are too! The back quote is the key to the left of the number 1 key on a standard keyboard.

You can also rewrite his code TODAY=`date +%Y%m%d` as follows (assuming Korn Shell is used):
TODAY=$(date +%Y%m%d)

OK. Still having problems

So the first line of my crontab is:

TODAY=$(date +%d%m%Y)

and the filenamr part of the cron command is:

backup$TODAY.sql

So what is wrong?

That returns the filename: backup$(date +%d%m%Y).sql

Thanks,
Ed

Works for me in ksh. Are you sure you are using ksh? If not, as google mentioned do:

TODAY=`date +%Y%m%d`

backup${TODAY}.sql

It's now returning

backup{`date +%d%m%Y`}.sql

as the filename!!!!!

I'm a newbie to Unix, so I hope I'm write in saying the declaration of the variable should go on the first line of the file that opens when you type "crontab -e"???

How do I find out if this is ksh or whatever?

Thanks,
Ed