UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am new to UNIX and I am trying to write a shell script. I want to be able to list all files that were created with yesterdays dates (APR 29 as an example) that are not 0 file size.Then in those files I want to look for the string 'Process Complete' and list all files that DONT have that string. Any ideas would be appreciated, I know it will involve grep and date but I am only starting out and the syntax does still confuse me a lot.

Sounds like a job for the find command. When looking for yesterdays files, you can create a reference file with the touch command. Search the boards for this as there are a few recent examples. The rest of the work you need to accomplish can also be done using find. See man find Here is one such thread using the reference file. Click Here

i'm in good homour, so..... say thanks :-)

#!/usr/bin/ksh
FOUND=`find ./ -ctime -1 -mtime -1 -atime -1 -size +1c -print -depth`
for OUTPUT in $FOUND
do
COMPLETE=`fgrep "Process Complete" $OUTPUT`
if [ -z $COMPLETE ]
then
echo $OUTPUT
fi
done

greetings Preßy

*no responsibility is taken for the correctness of this information*

Thanks guys, i will try and let you know how I get on.

I keep getting the error with pressy script:

UX:ksh: ERROR: test: argument expected

Any ideas?

That error message is complaining about this line:


if [ -z $COMPLETE ]


The way pressy has it is correct though. Make sure you have a space between the brackets and the next character (between the [ and the - and also between the E and the ]. I've had times when I forgot the space and got that error. Also make sure the variable $COMPLETE is spelled correctly both here and where it is defined.

If it isn't that I'm not sure what would be causing it. If you are using ksh, which is looks like you are, you can try doing

ksh -x scriptname

to execute it with debugging. It will give you the output of each line so you can see what error is causing the problem hopefully.

Thanks, I have decided to try a different way though. The way I am trying is:

find ./logs -size +1c -exec grep -l 'Process Complete' {} \; -exec ls -l {} \; > $TOD

I am then checking the entries in this file against a date variable held in another file and echoing.

However, I cant bring back files that dont have 'Process Complete' only those that do.