What do you expect a failure of the touch command to tell you?

Please put code inside [code] tags.

base_dir=/app/data
var1=/eng
var2=/med
var3=/bsc

for <list of direcotries> in <parentdir>

Don't you mean:

Code:

for <directory> in <list of directories in parentdir>

do
  for i in *.20081230*   // searchin each of directories /data ,/med, /bsc for files to touch
  do
     touch *

Why touch everything on every iteration of the loop?

If you do that, you will have no idea which file failed to be touched.

     if [ -ne 0 ]

Syntax error. That should be:

Code:

if [ $? -ne 0 ]

       then
         echo "failed to touch `$1` "

That will try to execute the contents of $1 as a shell command. You mean:

Code:

echo "failed to touch '$1' "

     fi
   done

Code:

for dir in "$base_dir/$var1" "$base_dir/$var2" "$base_dir/$var3"
do
    (
      cd "$dir" || continue
      for i in *.20081230*
      do
           touch "$i"
           if [ $? -ne 0 ]
           then
              echo "failed to touch '$1' "
           fi
      done
    )
done