UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

In folder there are files
(eg ABS_18APR2012_XYZ.csv
DSE_17APR2012_ABE.csv) .
My requirement is to delete all the files except today's timestamp

I tried doing this to list all the files not having today's date timestamp

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

DATE=`date +"%d%h%Y"`
DIR=/data/rfs/
FOLDER=Test
FILE=$DIR$FOLDER

UDATE="$(echo $DATE | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]')"

ls $FILE | grep -v "${UDATE}"

exit 0

This is listing all the files not having today's date timestamp. Now I have to delete the files which are listed .Kindly help me out how I can delete the files.

Moderator's Comments:

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loose the quotes and ^ . Quotes wont allow your variable to expand, and ^ searches for file name starting with variable name, which in your case is at the end/middle. use following

Code:

ls $FILE | grep -v "$UPPDATE"

more precisely use:

Code:

ls $FILE | grep -v "$UPPDATE.csv"

Better to use find if it has -mtime:

Code:

find . -name '*.csv' -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;

That would delete .csv files older than 1 day.

The proper advice would be to use weak quotes

Code:

ls "$FILE" | grep -v "$UPDATE.csv"

In addition to the above posts, the script in post #1 contains obvious typing errors. The inconsistent spelling of all references to what probably should be $UPDATE .

thanks for pointing it out, made appropriate correction in post#2

Hi neutronscott,
This will remove files according to modification time but in this scenario one can modify file at any moment. So this query will not give correct results

---------- Post updated at 12:42 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:40 AM ----------

Hi methyl,

thanks for pointing it out the typing error.Made required change

---------- Post updated at 12:47 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:42 AM ----------

Hi 47shailesh,

$UPPDATE is a substring having todays date pattern as filename would be somewhat like this
(eg ABS_18APR2012_XYZ.csv
DSE_17APR2012_ABE.csv)
so what I am trying to do is removing all the files other than todays date pettern

but this

Code:

ls $FILE | grep -v "$UPPDATE"

will list the files who is having todays date pattern