UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I am a novice user on an AIX 5.3 system.

I am running some scripts via crontab and redirecting the output to a file.

For example:

Code:

/home/cognos/ppdev_refresh.sh > /home/cognos/ppdev_refresh.txt

I want to append the system date to the file name so it becomes:

Code:

ppdev_refresh_20100329.txt

The process runs once a day and I want to keep all the output files and avoid having them overwritten. I have been manually renaming the file to add the suffix but that's a pain.

I have searched these forums and found some discussions of the system date but I cannot figure out how to make the syntax work.

Is what I want to do possible, and if so, what is the syntax for use in crontab?

Thanks for your help.

Maurice

Try this:

Code:

home/cognos/ppdev_refresh.sh > /home/cognos/ppdev_refresh_$(date '+%Y%m%d').txt

Franklin52,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I tried this at the command line and it worked. I will use it in crontab next.

I appreciate your help.

Maurice

Hello again,

The solution above works exactly as I wanted in the command prompt, but the same syntax gives different results when run from crontab.

When I add this line to crontab:

31 11 * * * /home/cognos/check_disk_free.sh > /home/cognos/check_disk_free_$(date '+%Y%m%d').txt


This is a file name generated by crontab:

check_disk_free_Wed Mar 31 11:31:00 EDT 2010

(no extension applied)

What am I doing wrong?

How do I specify the date format in crontab so the suffix becomes _20100331.txt

Thanks again for your help

Strange, try to escape the % sign and don't use quotes:

Code:

/home/cognos/check_disk_free_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).txt

If cron's using an incredibly old shell, you might try backticks, "filename_`command`" instead of "filename_$(command)"

Franklin52,

Thanks, this syntax works in crontab. The file name produced is now:

check_disk_free_20100331.txt

Just what I wanted.

I appreciate your help. This is an excellent forum and I am glad I found it.

Maurice