Shell Programming and Scripting

Yeah I noticed that and corrected it already. Thanks!

Thanks for the tip, Gary_w. The end result of the date exercise is to concatenate the fields into a date/time stamp of the form "Aug17_1445". Assuming that will work with your code, I'll give it a try.

---------- Post updated at 03:05 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:47 PM ----------

gary_w, that's pretty slick, but when I concatenate the time fields I get spaces in between the values. Is there a trim function that would clear that up? Also, even though I'm only calling for $hr and $mn, I'm getting seconds as well. The resulting string looks like: Aug17_14 45 30. The old way put it out as Aug17_1445. The only problem I have with it is when the day is less than 2 digits. Then it comes out as Aug 7_1445. It would be nice to clean that up while I'm making adjustments.

Please note this improved example. Using a ksh feature of setting the IFS for a read right before the read command itself, one does not have to save the old IFS and restore it: I just now learned this so thanks!!!

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

# save date output in a variable.
todaysdate=$(date)

# Parse the elements into their own variables.
print $todaysdate|read dw mo da time zn yr

print "[$dw][$mo][$da][$time][$zn][$yr]"
# If you really need the time elements split out:
print $time | IFS=":" read hr mn sc

print "[$hr][$mn][$sc]"

timestamp="${mo}${da}_${hr}${mn}"

print $timestamp

Output:

Code:

$ timetest
[Wed][Aug][17][16:06:13][EDT][2011]
[16][06][13]
Aug17_1606
$

Note: I believe my previous example had spaces in the time field as the entire $time field ended up in $hr. It didn't parse on the IFS of ":". I believe it is because in the pipe the read actually runs in a subshell that doesn't know about the IFS changing. I could be wrong (I was wrong once before). At any rate doing it the improved way gets rid of that problem. :-)

It works like a charm. Thanks a bunch.

Simplify even more by eliminating having to parse the time separately. Format the date command like this:

Code:

date '+%a %b %e %H %M %S %Z %Y'

Ouput:

Code:

Thu Aug 18 09 20 20 EDT 2011

and change the read command as appropriate.

---------- Post updated at 12:43 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:25 AM ----------

---------- Post updated at 12:44 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:43 PM ----------

Doh! The simplest way of all:

Code:

timestamp=$(date '+%b%e_%H%M')

$ echo $timestamp
Aug18_1241
$

Ok, I'm done. :-)

Gary