UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

UNIX Sun Ultra60 5.5.1

Hello everybody, I have a problem that seems simple but turns out to be complex (for me at least). My program needs to open a directory (this part is easy), scan each filename and determine whether or not a file with the suffix (.07) exists. So the program would return true if these files existed in the specified dir:

00.01.02.03.01
01.02.01.06.02
03.06.02.06.07 <----
01.01.02.01.00

and false if the extension did not exist. I've tried looking for functions on the internet (like stat() for example) but haven't really found anything that seems like it would work. Is there a specific function that returns the filename into a given string? That would definitely solve all my problems...If anyone has any thoughts at all, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Try using:

count=`ls *.07 | wc -l`

And then check if count is greater than 0

Hope it helps

Sounds to me like your program is not a unix script. But if it is a unix script, the test suggested by lvalero will get your true/false, or to get each qualifying filename, you can:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
for fn in `ls *.07`
do
  echo "Processing $fn ..."
done
exit 0

>Sounds to me like your program is not a unix script.

Well ... you can always try to execute Unix from inside your programs

BTW which language are you using to program. If you are using java the answer is very simple

Thank you for all of your quick responses. I am programming in C, but I'm not sure how to implement scripts. Will that be necessary in this case? Thanks again.

James.

In C you can use readdir() to read a directory. Type "man readdir" for more info.