Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,
I used the search engine but could not find the solution I am looking for. Probably its simple but I do not know the solution.
My requirement is I ftp files every day in the morning from the remote server to the local machine. Now if the files are not there at the time I schedule the ftp process, my script will exit saying file not found.

Now I do not want to exit the script and constantly check the ftp server and start the ftp process as soon as the file is avaliable. I tried sleep for 1000 seconds but do not know if thats the only option. Are there any commands that can detect a new file in the remote location and trigger the ftp mechanism?

Please let me know If I am not clear. I would really appreciate your help.

You may try following method.

Schedule a cron job in your local machine which will check whether file is copied already for the day. If not, it has to connect to the remote machine and try to copy it.

Here the problem is even after copying file to local machine, cron job will run. You may alter the cronjob set up inside your script to fire only on the next day on successful copy.

Could you please send me a sample script. I know I am asking for too much but my expertise is very limited in UNIX scripting.

Thanks