Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I"m writing a script to store all the contents of multiple files with different file names into one single file.
I am giving in only last modified date of file in a folder. The below script gives a list of just one file based on the input date i give which is taken as string variable. I want to list and store the same file listed, and file which is before and after the above said date. For ex:
If i need a file starting with identity_*(timestamp) on a date 17th Aug. I give input as 17th Aug as input. It should save all the files in the directory which start with identity_* for 16th Aug, 17th Aug, 18th Aug in a file.

Code:

#!/bin/bash
#date to match
DATE="$1"

# file, it can be wild cards too
FILE="$2"
# List of file to edit
FLIST=""
for f in $FILE
do
FDATE=$(ls -l $f | awk '{ print $7 $6 }')
if [ "$DATE" == "$FDATE" ];then
FLIST="$FLIST $f"
fi
done

# just display list of files and let the use do

[ "$FLIST" != "" ] && echo $FLIST || echo "Sorry no files found to match $DATE date."

Thanks,

Ash

It really a pain because of 1, 30, 31-th days of monthes (don't count February and leap years). If you need accuracy you can use GNU date with -d option and appropriate format for input and output dates. Or use time functions in gawk or perl or ruby or python. If not - make an associative array (bash 4.x) with Jan = 31, Feb = 28, etc. and work with it.
It's just a simple but boring programming task.

Is it possible to search for a multiple strings (like an OR statement) (08T12\|08T13\|) in all the files of the directory and then copy the grep results in a file ??
I want to know if any regular expression would be useful.... i'm a total newbie to shell scripting. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,