UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am writing a script that looks for files. I need to know if there is a placeholder character when doing this. I know that you can user a wildcard (*) character, but I would prefer to be a bit more specific. When I get files in a specific directory, I know part of the name, but not the rest and I'm interested in determining if a file was placed there today. The naming convention for the files are:

INCOME-ccyymmdd-hhiissT.zip

where:

cc is the century
yy is the year
mm is the month
dd is the day

hh is the hour
ii is the minute
ss is the second

The problem is that I can figure out the day, but I have no earthly idea what the time will be! As and example, I could get a file that is named:

INCOME-20020819-142030T.zip

This would be a file that was sent on 8/19/2002 at 2:20:30 pm. What I have in my script is:

Code:

if [ -f /export/home/INCOME-20020819-*T.zip ]
  then
  echo "Found the file."
  echo
else
  echo "ERROR: Could not find file."
  exit
fi

What I would like to know is if there is a placeholder so I could make the if statement something like:

if [ -f /export/home/INCOME-20020819-$$$$$$T.zip ]

where the $$$$$$ represents the time (just a placeholder, not a wildcard).

Please advise.

Thanks.


added code tags for readability --oombera

maybe this can help:

Code:

#!/bin/csh

foreach FILE (`ls -1 /export/home/INCOME-20020819-*T.zip )

if -f (/export/home/$FILE) then
    echo "Found the file." 
    echo 
else 
    echo "ERROR: Could not find file." 
    exit 
fi 

end

you can modify it to run it in your own shell

added code tags for readability --oombera

try:
if [ -f /export/home/INCOME-20020819-??????T.zip ]

? is a wildcard, but it is a single character. But frankly, I don't understand why you object to:
if [ -f /export/home/INCOME-20020819-*T.zip ]

Do you really have some unwanted files that would match that?

if [ -f /export/home/INCOME-20020819-*T.zip ] works and I found out before I got any replies. I also need the ? placeholder for other things (since this one won't require it, thanks!). One more question. Now that I can tell there's a file there (since the logic said it found the file), how can I determine the real name of the file (the wildcard lets me know there's a match, but doesn't tell me exactly what the name is of the file it found (should never be but one match))? Please advise.

Thanks.

You can just use that pattern where ever you need the name. If you want to store the name in a variable, you could do:
variable=`echo /export/home/INCOME-20020819-$$$$$$T.zip`

When I tried that, it gave me:

INCOME-20020819-155311553115531T.zip

There is a file there and it's called:

INCOME-20020819-172152T.zip

It almost looks like it duplicated 15531 three times. What I am specifically looking to do is the get the actual name of the file (INCOME-20020819-172152T.zip) so I can unzip it then ftp it somewhere. I know how to do the unzipping and ftping, just don't know how to get the actual name of the file. Please help!

Thanks.

Sorry this is so confusing

Happened to me too when I tried it.

file="./export/home/INCOME-20020818-??????T.zip"
echo $file

will work, but it gives you the path along with the name...