UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i'm new at UNIX, and i;ve wonderd - can i write an alias that will show me only files from today? (not directories) ls -somthing, or some script that works with date...

Thanks

What shell are you using (bash, ksh, etc.), what flavor of UNIX (linux, solaris, etc.)?

basic unix (text only), and please tell me how do i check my shell/flavor??
as i said - i'm a newbe... :-)

To check which Unix flavor you are using:

Code:

uname -a

To check which shell:

Code:

echo $SHELL

Quick and crude.
Assumes no files older than one year.
Assumes that your "ls -la" output has the date as "Mmm dD"

Code:

(e.g. "Apr 31" "Mar  4").

Note the extra space character for days 1-9 .

Only clever thing in the "date" command is the double quotes which we use to preserve space characters and the %e which gives the day of the month with leading space for single digit day of month.
The "grep" is looking for lines in the "ls -la" output which start with a hyphen character (i.e. Only files).

Code:

TODAY="`date '+%b %e%'`"        # Mmm dD
ls -la | grep "${TODAY}" | grep \^\-

Note: This is not a commercial solution because it cannot distinguish this year and older years. The commercial approach would use "touch" to create a reference file timestamped at the start of the day, then find files relative to that reference file.