UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I am relatively new to unix and I need to write a simple script to monitor a log directory. Being adventurous, I intend to pick up a couple of scripting to make my work more efficient.

I need to
1) merge files with names that starts with the same date
Example:
12052005.2alarm
12052005.3alarm
:
:
2) sort and grab relevant rows and resort them into a file in a prefixed time every day
3) automate the daily process as a daemon process ?is this the correct term?
4) A second daemon that merge the files from above steps weekly

Assistance required to
1) how to find files and merge the relevant files together?
I have thought of a solution but do not know how to carry it out as a script
#search for files
find date+*
#store the file names
???
#carry out a append of the files
cp ??? >> 'date'

2) I have completed and tested this section, I had used GREP then a UNIQ to acomplish the task

3) How to write a script that will carry out a certain function at the predefined interval? (daily at XXXXh and weekly at mon XXXXh)

4) I believe that the solution for 3 can be altered for this function

Thanks a lot

Something like
find . -name "`date +%d%m%Y*alarm`" -exec cat {} \; >> /path/to/outputfile
(for files with todays date)

find . -name "mydatehere*alarm" -exec cat {} \; >> /path/to/outputfile
(for files with any date you specify - look into GNU date's -d option)
Good for you
Write your script, then read the cron manual page.

Cheers
ZB

Thanks. Let me test it out

Thanks again