UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

How can we search for a file with current date(sysdate).

Actually i want the file name from a directory which was created today(current date).

For example i have a dir /home/arch and i have files with name aglito03axyz.datetimestamp in this directory, but all these files were created on different dates. suppose we have 3 files :

dba May 18 00:06 aglito03axyz.20090518000506.arc
dba May 19 00:07 aglito03axyz.20090519000511.arc
dba May 20 00:07 aglito03axyz.20090520000506.arc

from the above we have 3 files with name aglito03axyz.datetimestamp and were created on different days, suppose i want the file created today(May 20th 2009) then i should get the file name as aglito03axyz.20090520000506.arc.

How can this be achieved.

Thanks
Sandeep

Code:

find /home/arch -mtime 1

I think Padow meant "find /home/arch -mtime 0" , though I don't think this will give you what you require either because it will still include files created yesterday.

Maybe try generating today's date and using it to match filenames:

Code:

cd /home/arch
YYYYMMDD="`date +%Y%m%d`"
ls -1 aglito03axyz.${YYYYMMDD}??????.arc 2>/dev/null | while read FILENAME
do
      echo "${FILENAME}"
done

methyl,

padow code works perfectly in my case.

If i use "find /home/arch -mtime 1" i am getting the file created today(May20th) and if i use "find /home/arch -mtime 0" i do not get any results.

But if we see the syntax of "find" command, if we use "-mtime 0" then it should give the files created today. I dont know why "0" is not working here.

The -mtime parameter to "find" is in multiples of 24 hours. The results will depend on what time you run the command relative to when the files were last changed. I still think that find is not the right program for this job.

methyl,

You are right -mtime does not always work. The solution you suggested was to search for the file name which contains date.

I do not want to go in that way.

Is there any solution where we can find for a particular file which was created today.( I do not want to go by searching the filename).

Thanks

Another approach. Create a file dated exactly midnight and find files newer than that file.

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
cd /home/arch
REF_DATE=/tmp/my_reference_date.$$
YYYYMMDD="`date +%Y%m%d`"
SEARCH='aglito03axyz.??????????????.arc'
touch -t "${YYYYMMDD}0000.00" ${REF_DATE}
find . -type f -name "${SEARCH}" -newer ${REF_DATE} -print | while read FILENAME
do
      echo "${FILENAME}"
done
#
rm ${REF_DATE}