For

Code:

find . -name "*.log" -mtime -8

..... do you mean

Code:

find . -name "*.log" -mtime -8 -ls

That could give the listing you have.

For the listing, am I okay to assume that it's better to show it as this:-

Code:

3679   Jul 21 23:59 belk_rpo_error_po9324892_07212014.log
   0    Jul 22 23:59 belk_rpo_error_po9324892_07222014.log
   3679 Jul 23 23:59 belk_rpo_error_po9324892_07232014.log
     22 Jul 22 06:30 belk_rpo_error_po9324267_07012014.log
      0 Jul 20 05:50 belk_rpo_error_po9999992_07202014.log
    411 Jul 21 06:30 belk_rpo_error_po9999992_07212014.log
    742 Jul 21 07:30 belk_rpo_error_po9999991_07212014.log
      0 Jul 23 2014 belk_rpo_error_po9999991_07232014.log

.... where the red highlights the selection bit and the bold are those to be picked up? Note that find does not give you a listing that is sorted in any way in particular. It just reads the directories and gives them to you in the order written, which may or may not be what you need.


Okay, now what about the rest of the questions?As for "What logical process have you considered?" , well !

Okay let's make this simpler. From what you wrote, I think you want to take (maybe read in, maybe loop for all) the order number which in your examples is po........ and get the most recent file that is not empty.

Am I correct?



If so, perhaps something more like this might help:-

Code:

ls -1t *${order_no}* | while read file       # For each file matching the search in a simple list, newest first
do
   if [ -s $file ]            # Test if it's a file with bytes in it
   then
      use_file=$file
      break
   else
      echo "Ignoring empty file $file"
   fi
done

echo "I selected $use_file"

Let me know what you think and the answers to the other requests, if you could be so kind. There may be limitations based on what you have so that may set our choices.


Robin