Shell Programming and Scripting

and ls -l file1.txt | awk '{print $6}' returns 2010-09-01
echo "The modified date of file is $Filecrtdate" returns Sep

when I change script to read
Filecrtdate=`ls -l file1.txt | awk '{print $6,$7,$8}`
echo "The modified date of file is $Filecrtdate" it returns Sep 1 22:04

Doesn't make sense seeing how the $6 field in the ls -l command is the date $7 is time stamp and $8 should be file name

Have you thought about just converting these dates into integers for the comparison?

date +%s for now, and
date --date=yesterday +%s (or whatever you inject via loop)

Yes but I would still like to know why this is not working as it should. The way I have it is it compares to strings in identical format but for some reason when I type out the ls command under the command line I get different data then what is passed into the variable. I don't know why. Logic would say if i type
ls -l file1.txt | awk '{print $6}' and it displays 2010-09-01
now do
Filecrtdate=` ls -l file1.txt | awk '{print $6}'` my variable should have the value of 2010-09-01 instead it just has the value of SEP
when I echo $Filecrtdate it has the value of SEP

Could you check if specifying time-style makes a difference ?

Code:

ls -l --time-style=long-iso f5 | awk '{print $6}'

and

Code:

x=`ls -l --time-style=long-iso f5 | awk '{print $6}'`
echo $x

tyler_durden

you could try ls -lat --time-style=iso

---------- Post updated at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:35 PM ----------

Grin, guess I should refresh my pages when I get back from lunch. These would work as well..

OK found the problem. Problem was the ls command used in the command line was of a different format then the ls command used within the bash script. So when I compared the data at the command line I was comparing the same results. We I run ls within the bash script it was formatted to show the name of month therefore the data was not the same. Problem was resolved by using the stat command and extracting the date needed from that output comparing it to the system date which was formatted to match. Script is now working as intended. Thank you all for your help.