UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have 20 or so files that are ftp'd each day to a particular directory. I want to create a script that will tell me if any of these files fails to arrive or if any additional files arrive. I'm thinking I'd have a list of file names that should arrive each day, and the script would check each days files against this list. Anyone got any bright ideas!? Thanks!

If you are on Linux you can use inotify to trigger script action every time a file arrives.
Otherwise, you will l have to run your job very late in the day and compare filenames to a list of expected names. Here is a simple example to start with:
filelist - list of files like
file.txt
pdq.lis

This assumes the new files are eventually moved or renamed

Code:

ls -1 > currentfiles
awk 'FILENAME=="filelist" {arr[$0]++}
       FILENAME=="currentfiles" { if (! $0 in arr) {print "new file: " $0 } else {arr[$0]++}}
       END {for (file in arr) {if(arr[file]==1) {print arr[file] " not found"}}   }   
       '   filelist  currentfiles

Thankyou for that, has got me thinking a bit more!
The filenames that come in each day include the date, eg abcdef.20090708.gz.

So I think I will have to compare part of the file names, rather than look for an exact match. Perhaps I can have a file containing a list of strings (which will be the filenames expected to be rec'd each day minus the date part). Then a file listing all files rec'd on a particular day can be checked to see that each line contains one of these strings.

The newly received files are not renamed or moved, they just stack up in a folder, but since the filename contains the date they are of course unqiue names.

Any thoughts gratefully received!