UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am very new to scripting in UNIX and in need of help. I am creating a program that will check a file that has a target time in the form of HH:MM:SS before another program can begin executing. The file with the target time will only have that target time in it and nothing else.

Is there any way to validate that the time that is entered in the file is entered correctly when using: date +%T as the command to check the current time? I would like to validate the target time in the file in the program that I am creating. Please help

It looks like you may be using the version of date that supports filetimes.
Look on your date manpage for the -r option. This will give you the mtime of a file.

Would something like this help?

Code:

case myfilename in
  *[012][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]*) echo "Filename format is valid";;
  *) echo "Filename does not contain HH:MM:SS";;
esac

thanks guys, i will let you know how it goes

How would i prevent someone from keying in 29:00:00 as a time?