Setting Variable to Oldest File in the Directory

[spaceherpe61]

I am looking for some help on using a wildcard in a bash script. I am trying to find the oldest file in directory. When I run the script using [user@server /usr/utilities]$sh -x script.sh <directory> the script works fine. It sets the variable to the oldest file. However when I run the script like this [user@server /usr/utilities]$./script.sh <directory>
it never sets the variable which blows up my script. Here is how I am setting the variable.

cd $1
getoldestfile=`ls -lat *.TXT | grep ^- | tail -1 | head -1`
file=`echo $getoldestfile |cut -d " " -f 9`

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

 

[KenCunningham]

Maybe you need a tr in there:

file=`echo $getoldestfile | tr -s ' ' ' ' |cut -d " " -f 9`


I want to be good, is that not enough?

 

[Annihilannic]

It sounds like on the second occasion it is not being run by the same shell; perhaps you are in C shell or something?

Try adding a shebang line #!/usr/bin/sh to the first line of the script to force it to run under sh?

Assuming that it's unlikely for a directory to exist matching *.TXT, I would shorten it to:

cd $1
file=`ls -t *.TXT | tail -1`

Annihilannic.

 

[Pochu]

var1=`ls -tr |head -1`