Shell Programming and Scripting

@DGPickett I do not want all the files in the target folder, I Just need latest set of files(4 files)

First a bit of preparation.
Create a shell script containing say:

Code:

echo "YESTERDAY=\"`date +'%m%d%Y'`\"" > /var/tmp/yesterday
chmod 755 /var/tmp/yesterday

Then create a cron for 23:59 daily to run this script.
The script generates a line like:

Code:

YESTERDAY="03082011"

The following day.

Next bit is a vague because we don't know anything about your existing FTP script.
Your script will then probably contain:

Code:

. /var/tmp/yesterday         # Set $YESTERDAY to yesterday date

And in the FTP commands in your Shell here document:
mget *${YESTERDAY}.txt

Yes, but if them make one file a day and you were in syn after your run yesterday, that is one file. If there is a problem, you might move more than one, and then you are back in sync. Otherwise, you have to parse ftp 'ls' output for date-time and sort to find the newest file. The 'comm -23' way is robust and simpler -- no parse, platform independent, name independent.