Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,

I have a crontab entry for every 5 min running.

5 * * * * /tmp/scripts/ksh/CsVues_H.sh `date +%Y%m%d_%H` >> /tmp/scripts/ksh/Cronresult.log

and I am passing the date parameter. ( `date +%Y%m%d_%H` )

But the parameter values which i am expecting inside the script is somethinglike "20080910_12". But iam getting values like "Wed Sep 17 12:35:47 CEST 2008"

How can i convert the values like "20080910_12" ? (in AIX Machine)

Thanks and Regards

Can you not place the date command inside the script itself?

No.
Because some times i need to run the scripts mannualy also with differnt times ...

Try to escape the % in the date format:

Code:

5 * * * * /tmp/scripts/ksh/CsVues_H.sh $(date +\%Y\%m\%d_\%H) >> /tmp/scripts/ksh/Cronresult.log

Or use quotes:

Code:

5 * * * * /tmp/scripts/ksh/CsVues_H.sh $(date '+%Y%m%d_%H') >> /tmp/scripts/ksh/Cronresult.log

Regards

Or maybe cron has a PATH which picks up a really old version of date which doesn't even understand the +%xxx stuff. Can you add an explicit path to the correct date command? (Maybe write a wrapper script which calculates the date and sets up the redirection, so that what you invoke from crontab is just the name of the wrapper script and nothing too complex.)

I don't know AIX, but I do know there are some ancient shells out there. The default shell for cron is usually /bin/sh. That could be part of the problem as Franklin notes. However, finding a root cause may or may not solve the problem - I'm all for workarounds in cases like this, because cron can be pain in the butt.

Create a second wrapper script with a decent shell

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh  
# start_CSVues.sh
/tmp/scripts/ksh/CsVues_H.sh $(date +\%Y\%m\%d_\%H) >> /tmp/scripts/ksh/Cronresult.log
exit $?

Put start_CsVues.sh in the crontab. I'm with era on this it is not worth the time to debug.

Hi All,

I tried Franklin's code

5 * * * * /tmp/scripts/ksh/CsVues_H.sh $(date +\%Y\%m\%d_\%H) >> /tmp/scripts/ksh/Cronresult.log

Its working ....

And thanks to all for the help ....