Shell Programming and Scripting

hi
i have a very simple problem
iam moving files from download to archive folder
but before such a transfer want to make sure no two file of same
are present in my download directory
how to check for redundant file names
i thought of using WC but it counts inside the file (lines and characters)

I don't understand... you can't have two files in the same directory with the same name.

Do you want to make sure there isn't a file in the archive folder with the same name as the file you're moving out of the download folder?

hi oombra
first of all sorry for the confusion
yes indeed iam checking files in archive folder

actually iam moving files from download dir to archive folder
after inserting the date time stamp. now i want to make sure that
there are no files with same name and same date(time may differ)
in the archive folder

i want to do it cause in that case i want to use the most recent file

If you are using a shell script, simply test for the existance
of the file prior to moving it to the archive directory.

[ -e $file ] && {
echo "file already exists"
}

- F

A different approach to this problem:

If you named your file correctly when you move it e.g. in the format

FILE_YYYYMMDD_hhmmss

where YYYY = year
MM = month number
DD = day number
hh = hours
mm = minutes
ss = seconds

Then you could move all files to the archive directory. When you want to process the most recent file do something like:

PROCESS_FILE=`ls dir FILE_* | sort -r | head -n 1`

If necessary you may remove unneccessary files from the archive directory by using the find command:

find $ARCHIVE_DIR -mtime 3 -exec rm -f {} \;

to remove files more than 3 days old.

Regards

MBB

i know the problem you are haveing. because i had it.

1) i archive by day.
2) most files have a time stamp to the sec. (still dosnet help)
3) i use a microsec at the end of the file name. (now 1 in a million chance of haveing the same name.

so if you test the existance of the current filename in your archive dir. and move it to the archive dir w/ a microsec at the end of it you will be all good.

this is the code for a 6 digit microsec it is in c.

Code:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
main()
{
     struct timeval tv;
     struct timezone tz;
     struct tm *tm;
     gettimeofday(&tv, &tz);
     tm=localtime(&tv.tv_sec);
        printf("%06d\n", tv.tv_usec);
     exit(0);
}