Get the oldest date based on date in the filename Post: 302527101

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Get the oldest date based on date in the filename Post 302527101 by gary_w on Thursday 2nd of June 2011 11:41:13 AM

06-02-2011

Registered User

Get the oldest date based on date in the filename

I am using ksh93 on Solaris.

Ok, this may seem like a simple request at first. I have a directory that contains sets of files with a YYYYMMDD component to the name, along with other files of different filespecs. something like this:

Code:

20110501_1.dat
20110501_2.dat
20110501_3.dat
20110502_1.dat
20110502_2.dat
20110502_3.dat
20110503_1.dat
20110503_2.dat
20110503_3.dat

I need to get the date component of the filename of the oldest set, and try to be flexible for future filename patterns. So far I have this:

Code:

$ ls |grep '.*[0-9]\{8\}.*'|sort |head -1|cut -c1-8
$ 20110501

problems with this:
- grep is looking for a string of 8 numbers anywhere in the name (not really a date format-what if future files also have numbers in the name).
- the cut assumes the date string of characters is in the beginning of the filename but I need to allow for it anywhere in the filename.
- Whenever I start building long pipelines that is usually a red flag that I should look for a more efficient way.

Ideally I would like to base the search on a filename mask, i.e. I read from another file or a database table that the filespec I am looking for is "filename1_YYMMDDHHMM.dat", or "YYYYMMDD_filename1.dat" where I would then run the command using that filespec to get the oldest set in order to process the sets in date order.

Perhaps the right find command or some awk magic?

I would appreciate any ideas on making this flexible.

Thanks for any info.
Gary

gary_w

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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS

let

let(1)								   User Commands							    let(1)

NAME

       let - shell built-in function to evaluate one or more arithmetic expressions

SYNOPSIS

   ksh
       let arg...

   ksh93
       let [expr...]

DESCRIPTION

   ksh
       Each arg is a separate arithmetic expression to be evaluated.

   ksh93
       let  evaluates  each expr in the current shell environment as an arithmetic expression using ANSI C syntax. Variables names are shell vari-
       ables and they are recursively evaluated as arithmetic expressions to get numerical values. let has been made obsolete by the ((...))  syn-
       tax of ksh93(1) which does not require quoting of the operators to pass them as command arguments.

EXIT STATUS

   ksh
       ksh returns the following exit values:

       0    The value of the last expression is non-zero.

       1    The value of the last expression is zero.

   ksh93
       ksh93 returns the following exit values:

       0     The last expr evaluates to a non-zero value.

       >0    The last expr evaluates to 0 or an error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWcsu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       ksh(1), ksh93(1), set(1), typeset(1), attributes(5)

SunOS 5.11							    2 Nov 2007								    let(1)

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