Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi Guys,

I am having a brain freeze....

I want to monitor a directory for a time stamped file on a sol 10 system in bash or ksh, the files will come in looking like this..

randomfile.DDMMYY.rpt

The problem i am having is the file can come in before or after midnight, the file will come in with the pre midnight date even if it comes in after mid night but i can't think what variable to use as my date, e.g
if i use

DAY=`TZ=CST+24 date '+%d%m%y'` this works fine if the script runs after midnight, but if its before midnight it's looking for the wrong date...and i need this script to monitor before and after midnight for specific files.......also there are older versions of up to 7 days of the files i'm looking for.

I'm guessing i need to some how check the time to use what variable to use? I'm sure there has to be a better way to do it.
Any suggestions would help.....in my head this seems so easy to do, but my brain is sat in the corner reading the paper giving me rude hand gestures.

Just playing around, as least on my linux computer, is this what you're looking for?

Code:

$ TZ=CST+24 date '+%d%m%y' --date=today
020413
$ TZ=CST+24 date '+%d%m%y' --date=yesterday
010413

Thanks for the reply. My network connection just went boom so I can't really look until I log back in. I just need it to Monitor a directory for files say randomfile.030413 and then after midnight still look for randomfile.030413. So I need away to change the variable after midnight? There is maybe a better solution than the approach I'm using or your idea fits?

I think my idea probably fits. I think something like this will likely work in a shell script:

Code:

    today=`TZ=CST+24 date '+%d%m%y' --date=today`
yesterday=`TZ=CST+24 date '+%d%m%y' --date=yesterday`
     hour=`TZ=CST+24 date '+%H' --date=today`

expected_file=randomfile.$today.rpt
if [ -f $expected_file ]; then
  echo Found expected file from today: $expected_file
  # Process the file
fi

expected_file=randomfile.$yesterday.rpt
if [ -f $expected_file -a $hour -le 2 ]; then
  echo Found expected file from yesterday: $expected_file
  echo Must have slid in just before midnight
  # Process the file
fi

Great i am seeing your approach, at first glance this could work, but i do also have files from the last seven days in the directory so i need to make sure i do it so i dont detect a file from 2 days back :P thanks so much for the answer it has got my brain back into gear for sure.

Yes, because you have a good system set up for naming the files, with the DDMMYY section, the old files, like the ones two days old, will be ignored. And once the day gets going, the script will ignore files from the previous day, depending on how you test for the $hour variable and how often the script runs.