UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi again,

I have went through the forum and did not find any threads to how we can compare two directories.

I am stuck in my script to do some logging.

The scenario is as followed:
1) 3rd party program for logging alarms (I will ask my vendor on how to write the script to automate the current manual capturing process)
2) Write a script to automatically ftp raw logs to a working directory (script done, but not perfect as it do not actually compare dates before ftp)
3) Carry out a comparsion of the working directory and a backup directory. Move and carry out sorting and appending of the logs that are new. (NEED HELP in the comparsion part)

I kinda got the 1, 2, and part of 3 done, as i found and written the required script for the functions. However to automate the process, I need to be able to carry out comparsion of two directories. Search for decrepanies and then carry out process on the missing logs.

How do I do a comparsion of files in directories?
I saw examples on how u can compare a directory for a list of fixed filenames like
list = "aname, bname, cname"
for i = $list
do
if [-e $1]
then
~processing~
fi
done

I cannot apply the following because I am trying to compare A dir to B dir. I have a fixed naming convention YYYYmmdd.*.alarm, I will need to get the file name that is not present in B, and create a file to merge the alarm files (I figure this out from the help of you kind ppl)

Another question:
Based on that naming convention, how can I list the date that are available?
ls *|uniq|awk -F"." does not seem to work.. how do I store a list of the dates? Can it be done by using ">>"?

Thanks

Since there are many ways to accomplish this under *nix, a simple way would be just to do this.

diff < /bin/ls /directory_1 /directory_2

This will compare the 2 directorys.
I am sure someone will show you a scrip to do this, but this works from a script or for commandline comparison.

locustfurnace must've had a rough night. There is a dircmp command. You might try that.