10-25-2006
Try this
The ls command has a couple of switches here that might accomplish what you are looking for. After reading this, do a man ls on whatever flavor of Unix you are using in case the exact letter used for the switch is different.
First, ls -lc will usually give you a timestamp of when the file was last modified.
Secondly, ls -lu will usually give you a timestamp of when the file was last accessed.
So, if a file has been created and never accessed (and hence never modified), an ls -lu command will report the timestamp of when the file was created. But the next time you access the file, that timestamp is updated.
Now, if you are trying to figure out which files are older than other files, you could try this:
ls -lct /directory
-l --> Gives the long listing, which includes the timestamp
-c --> Gives a timestamp of when the file was last written to
-t --> sorts the output so that the files most recently modified are at the top and the older modification times are at the bottom.
So, combining all of this with what I've gathered from your other posts:
from your home directory:
grep <whatever it is your looking for> /directory/of/*.dbf > somefile
Now, if you did a more on somefile the entry will probably look like this:
<the name of the file containing the string>:<the string you searched for>
Now, you want to get information on that file. If there are only a handful of lines, you could open somefile in vi and manually delete everything after the colon, which just leaves the filename. But, if you end up with dozens or even hundreds of entries, we need a more efficient way to parse out the filename.
awk -F: '{print $1}' somefile > somefile2
mv somefile2 somefile
We now have a list of all files in the /directory/of/*.dbf that match the string you wanted. Now to get information on those files.
for filename in `cat somefile`
do
ls -lc $filename >> somefile2
done
mv somefile2 somefile
Finally, more somefile.
** You'll note in my for loop I did not use the -t flag on the ls command. Since we're getting info on files one at a time, their really isn't a way to sort them here. Once we get all the output into a text file, you could use awk and sort to put them in order if you needed. **
It kinda long and ugly, but from what you told me this should get the job done.
Did this answer your question or did I go WAAAYYYY out in left field?
- HK
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grep(1) General Commands Manual grep(1)
Name
grep, egrep, fgrep - search file for regular expression
Syntax
grep [option...] expression [file...]
egrep [option...] [expression] [file...]
fgrep [option...] [strings] [file]
Description
Commands of the family search the input files (standard input default) for lines matching a pattern. Normally, each line found is copied
to the standard output.
The command patterns are limited regular expressions in the style of which uses a compact nondeterministic algorithm. The command patterns
are full regular expressions. The command uses a fast deterministic algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space. The command pat-
terns are fixed strings. The command is fast and compact.
In all cases the file name is shown if there is more than one input file. Take care when using the characters $ * [ ^ | ( ) and in the
expression because they are also meaningful to the Shell. It is safest to enclose the entire expression argument in single quotes ' '.
The command searches for lines that contain one of the (new line-separated) strings.
The command accepts extended regular expressions. In the following description `character' excludes new line:
A followed by a single character other than new line matches that character.
The character ^ matches the beginning of a line.
The character $ matches the end of a line.
A . (dot) matches any character.
A single character not otherwise endowed with special meaning matches that character.
A string enclosed in brackets [] matches any single character from the string. Ranges of ASCII character codes may be abbreviated
as in `a-z0-9'. A ] may occur only as the first character of the string. A literal - must be placed where it can't be mistaken as
a range indicator.
A regular expression followed by an * (asterisk) matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the regular expression. A regular
expression followed by a + (plus) matches a sequence of 1 or more matches of the regular expression. A regular expression followed
by a ? (question mark) matches a sequence of 0 or 1 matches of the regular expression.
Two regular expressions concatenated match a match of the first followed by a match of the second.
Two regular expressions separated by | or new line match either a match for the first or a match for the second.
A regular expression enclosed in parentheses matches a match for the regular expression.
The order of precedence of operators at the same parenthesis level is the following: [], then *+?, then concatenation, then | and new
line.
Options
-b Precedes each output line with its block number. This is sometimes useful in locating disk block numbers by context.
-c Produces count of matching lines only.
-e expression
Uses next argument as expression that begins with a minus (-).
-f file Takes regular expression (egrep) or string list (fgrep) from file.
-i Considers upper and lowercase letter identical in making comparisons and only).
-l Lists files with matching lines only once, separated by a new line.
-n Precedes each matching line with its line number.
-s Silent mode and nothing is printed (except error messages). This is useful for checking the error status (see DIAGNOSTICS).
-v Displays all lines that do not match specified expression.
-w Searches for an expression as for a word (as if surrounded by `<' and `>'). For further information, see only.
-x Prints exact lines matched in their entirety only).
Restrictions
Lines are limited to 256 characters; longer lines are truncated.
Diagnostics
Exit status is 0 if any matches are found, 1 if none, 2 for syntax errors or inaccessible files.
See Also
ex(1), sed(1), sh(1)
grep(1)