error on ls -lt

ZAMO · 05-26-2008, 12:44 AM

Hi all,

I am getting a error , while i run the command inside a directory.

ls -lt /A/B/C/D/filetolist*

-bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long...

I want to know the reason for this and an alternate solution to it. Since this output, will be used for a script, I want the desired output of "ls -lt"

Suggest some ways to go with

Thanks

chrism01 · 05-26-2008, 01:12 AM

It means that when the shell expands the wildcard '*' you end up with too many files that match ie too many args for ls to handle.
What you can do is just a straight ls of the dir (which will just read the info from the dir file) and grep out the ones you want

Code:

for file in `ls A/B/C/D |grep ^filetolist`
do
    ls -lt $file
done

Do you really need the info from the -lt switches?

ZAMO · 05-26-2008, 01:53 AM

Chris,

Thanks for the response.

Do you really need the info from the -lt switches?

Really needed. The script am using is listing the latest files from a number of directories. I failed to got the output(mailed to me, by the sctipt) for 2 directories , for the past couple of days .Then i found, the standard error in the mail from cron.

line 27: /bin/ls: Argument list too long (for the 2lines , denoting the 2 failed directories.)

I need to change the entire script , if i go on the way you shown....

Is there any other way to solve this...

Thanks Again

colucix · 05-26-2008, 02:26 AM

Quote:

The script am using is listing the latest files from a number of directories.

You can try to use find. For example if you want to find the files whose modification time is less than 5 days, you can do

Code:

find /A/B/C/D/ -mtime -5 -exec ls -l {} \;

using -exec you can execute the command ls -l over each of the files found. Or you can try the stat command to extract some more specific information (see man stat for details).

ZAMO · 05-26-2008, 02:50 AM

Thanks Colucix.,,

I can go with the "find " . The command you gave
find /A/B/C/D/ -mtime -5 -exec ls -l {} \;
is listing all files in that directory. But all the details I needed are there. Can you give me a "find" option to list the files created , within the last 5 days(along with ls -l , as above).

Thanks

colucix · 05-26-2008, 04:16 AM

I think it gives problems with recursion. Try either

Code:

find /A/B/C/D -mindepth 1 -mtime -5 -exec ls -l {} \;

or

Code:

find /A/B/C/D -type f -mtime -5 -exec ls -l {} \;

ZAMO, just a little advice: use the code tags for posting command lines: they are more readable and preserve multiple spaces, tabs and indentation. To embed a text inside code tags, go in advanced mode, select the text you want to embed and press the "#" button. Or put the code tags by typing them directly. Like this

[CO DE]do i = 1,n
write(*,*) array(n)
done[/CO DE]

strip out the blank space between O and D (I put it to show you what code tags are) and the trick is done

Code:

do i = 1,n
    write(*,*) array(n)
done

pwc101 · 05-26-2008, 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

To embed a text inside code tags, go in advanced mode, select the text you want to embed and press the "#" button. Or put the code tags by typing them directly. Like this

[CO DE]do i = 1,n
write(*,*) array(n)
done[/CO DE]

strip out the blank space between O and D (I put it to show you what code tags are) and the trick is done

Code:

do i = 1,n
    write(*,*) array(n)
done

@colucix: A slightly off-topic remark, but to illustrate how to format stuff in the forum, you can use [noparse][/noparse] tags, which will not interpret the information between those tags. This allows you to write [code][/code] and it will not insert a code block.

colucix · 05-26-2008, 05:09 AM

Good to know! Thank you, pwc101!

ZAMO · 05-26-2008, 09:38 AM

Thanks Again Colucix...

Yes ,am able to go with "find" . But i have an issue in this .

I have to list files with different names in a same directory too..

For you to understand my need.. Please have a look this link. Ignore the unanswered last post from me.

Code:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/bash-scripting-help-needed-640810/

Instead of working with

Code:

ls -t abc/123/ABC/456/freshfile* |head -2|tail -1|awk -F\/ '{print $NF}'

Code:

find abc/123/ABC/456  -type f -mtime -5 -exec ls -lt {} \; |tail -1 |awk -F\/ '{print $NF}'

Any Idea to get my desired output.

Sorry .,, If i confuse you a Lot