Shell Programming and Scripting

In my script I need to list the directory, where the generic name of the files will change, in my test case its set to TEST_*.mqsc. I wrote a small test script as below, but it just does not pip the listing to a file.
Any idea why?

dir='C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/'
file=TEST01_*.mqsc
ls $dir | grep "$file" > test.txt

When I run it in debug I get the following:

$ bash -x test.sh
+ dir=C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/
+ file='TEST01_*.mqsc'
+ ls C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/
+ grep TEST01_080924.mqsc TEST01_080925.mqsc TEST01_080926.mqsc TEST01_080927.mq
sc TEST01_080928.mqsc TEST01_080929.mqsc TEST01_080930.mqsc TEST01_081001.mqsc T
EST01_081002.mqsc TEST01_081003.mqsc TEST01_081004.mqsc TEST01_081005.mqsc TEST0
1_081006.mqsc TEST01_081007.mqsc TEST01_081008.mqsc TEST01_081009.mqsc TEST01_08
1010.mqsc
+ rc=1
+ echo 'Return Code is: 1'
Return Code is: 1

I guess it can't find anything since you can't write a regular expression for grep like you use metacharacters in the shell. Try this:

Code:

file="TEST01_.*\.mqsc"

Your former code meant _* which stands for zero or <n> occurences of _. And just a dot means any single character, not a dot. So the dot has to be escaped.

Oh and maybe use "ls -1" to have 1 file per row.

I executed the following:

file="TEST01_*\.mqsc"
ls -1 $dir | grep $file > test.txt
rc=$?
echo "Return Code is: $rc"

The result was:

$ bash -x test.sh
+ delete_files='TEST01_*.mqsc'
+ file='TEST01_*\.mqsc'
+ ls -1 C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/
+ grep TEST01_080924.mqsc TEST01_080925.mqsc TEST01_080926.mqsc TEST01_080927.mq
sc TEST01_080928.mqsc TEST01_080929.mqsc TEST01_080930.mqsc TEST01_081001.mqsc T
EST01_081002.mqsc TEST01_081003.mqsc TEST01_081004.mqsc TEST01_081005.mqsc TEST0
1_081006.mqsc TEST01_081007.mqsc TEST01_081008.mqsc TEST01_081009.mqsc TEST01_08
1010.mqsc
+ rc=1
+ echo 'Return Code is: 1'
Return Code is: 1

What does

Code:

ls -1 C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/ | grep TEST01_*\.mqsc

at the prompt show?

ls -1 C:/cygwin/var/log/img/aut/ | grep TEST01_*\.mqsc produced no output.

Anyway, instead of file="TEST01_*.mqsc", file="TEST01" should suffice as I am only interested in files that start with "TEST", * is for the date and .mqsc is consistent for all files.


However, I was making a silly error in the script. All I had to do was:

file="TEST01"
echo "File = $file"
ls -1 $dir | grep "$file" > test.txt

Thanks for helping me