UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I'm very new to this, so bear with me please.

I want to write a sh script (or if there's a better format please let me know) that allows me to, when I run it, print the date to a file (1.out) take 2 arguments (files a.fa and b.fa), run them with another program, outputting to 2.out, and then printing the date again in 1.out.

So basically something along the lines of:

example.sh
date
./program.exe argv[0] argv[1] >> 2.out #argv[0]_argv[1].out rather than 2.out
date

and I would run example.sh like so:

sh example.sh a.fa b.fa >> 1.out

and 1.out would read:

date1
date2

and 2.out would be the output of the program.

I would also like to name 1.out --> a_b_time.out and 2.out -->a_b.out

Any degree of help would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure to understand correctly.
Could you please give more clue about what you are trying to achieve ?

Code:

my_log_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).out

Yes, sorry.

So basically I want to run a program and track the start time, the time when the program starts running, to the end time, when the program is finished. What I want the shell script to do is to print the start time to a file, use the arguments entered in the command line as arguments for the program I'm running, and then print the time after the program is done running in the same file that the start time was printed to. I want the file containing the start and end times to be called firstargument_secondargument_time.out and the program output to be called firstargument_secondargument.out.

If there is another method of figuring out how long the program runs for of if you have any more questions, please let me know.

Sorry but i still don't understand what is the point.
Logging the start and end time into a log should be sufficient.

Code:

$ cat example.sh
MYLOG=my_log_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).out
exec >>$MYLOG 2>&1
date
echo start sleeping
sleep 10
date
exec >&-
$ sh example.sh
$ ls -rt | tail -1
my_log_20121102_210927.out
$ cat my_log_20121102_210927.out
vendredi 2 novembre 2012, 21:09:27 (UTC+0100)
start sleeping
vendredi 2 novembre 2012, 21:09:37 (UTC+0100)
$

Code:

$ cat example2.sh
date >mylog2.out
echo "Run some random prog" >>mylog2.out
sleep 10 >>mylog2.out
date >>mylog2.out
$ sh example2.sh
$ cat mylog2.out
vendredi 2 novembre 2012, 21:15:52 (UTC+0100)
Run some random prog
vendredi 2 novembre 2012, 21:16:02 (UTC+0100)
$

?

This is a duplicate of another thread Need help writing shell script! in the Shell Programming and Scripting forum and was answered there a few hours ago.