HOW TO FIND THE LATEST FILE BY FILE'S EXTENSION 1

[vaanand]

I am a UNIX newbie so excue me for my simple question. I am using HP-UNIX. The problem is I want to log into a remote server and pick out one file whose file extesion is the latest date and FTP it back into my local server . And I also want to get the name of the file I picked so that I have to use this file name for some other purpose. The whole thing should be korn shell script so that I can automate these processes.For example in the remote server there could be 4 or 5 files with same name but with different date extension as zzz.20010405,zzz.200010404,zzz.20010403. I need pick out the highest dated file extension. My script should pick zzz.20010405 and FTP this file to my local server and I need to get this file name into variable for other processing.

2) problem 2 is after FTP ing the largest date extension file to my local server i need to move these file in the remote server to another archive directory in the same remote server from Home directory of the remote server.

Thanks in advance.
Andy

 

[Krunek]

Hi, vaanand!

Please, try this command for the first problem:

  ls -1 | awk '$1 > prev { prev = $1 }  END { print prev }'

Command ls -1 lists one file per line.

$1 in awk script can be $0.  The highest dated file has name that is last in alphabetic order - awk script will pick up his name. Awk is suitable for this problem.

This command works if in directory are only zzz.* files.

Bye!

KP.

 

[Krunek]

Hi again, vaanand!

Another way to do this job:

ls -1 | sort -r | awk 'NR == 1'

Command sort -r sorts the output of ls -1 in reverse order. Awk command prints first line of input.

Bye!

KP.

 

[Krunek]

Again me, vaanand! Hi!

Now I have a better idea:

ls zzz.* -1 -r | awk 'NR == 1'

Command ls zzz.* -1 -r lists zzz filenames in reverse order.

I think, that's all from me to you for today.

Bye!

KP.