find before and after log files too, with date-time in filename.

rudydark · 05-27-2013, 08:46 AM

Greetings!

Just stuck with a problem. I would have to grep through several log files with fixed size rotation and with date and time in their name.
(It means that the rotation time can be considered random.)
(example:

Code:

/path/to/log/logfile-name.log.{yy}-{mm}-{dd}-{hh}-{mm}-{ss}

)

I would like to find the apropriate files by name. There can be several so I would like to use find rather more than ls.

Would like to work with several log files once but the problem is p.e.:

Code:

find /path/to/logs/ -name 'logfile-name.log.$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")--05_[0-6][0-9]_[0-6][0-9]'

finds me the files rotated\started in the 05:00 - 05:59 period.
This part is fine but I would need the preceeding and the following one file too in this list.

Only one before and only one after.

(p.e.: filename.log.yy-mm-dd-04-55-22, {filename.log.yy-mm-dd-05-*.*} , filename.log.yy-mm-dd-06-02-00

The number of files can vary, the previous and next needed files can be with any name.

I would like to grep and (p.e.) wordcount for all the files resulted here.
I would prefer a find solution than an ls one but other solutions are also welcome!

I hope my problem is clearly outlined and I hope you have some fine suggestions to solve it.

Thanks in Advance!
--
R

chrism01 · 05-27-2013, 07:01 PM

Actually, ls might be a good idea, because with a filename format like that, the names will sort naturally and you can use the -A & -B flags for grep.
Something like

Code:

ls /path/to/logs/ |sort |grep -A1 -B1 logfile-name.log.$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")-05*

http://linux.die.net/man/1/grep

rudydark · 05-28-2013, 07:14 AM

Thanks for the ideas chrism01!

Nice trick to grep the results of te ls command.
But the asterisk shall be added to the path in ls
and the expression shall be quoted unless the shell expands that and no result or not the desired results are coming.
The sort command could be left becouse ls default is to list the files with ordered by name.
Anyhow does not hurt there.

Code:

ls -d1 /path/to/logs/* |sort |grep -A1 -B1 'logfile-name.log.$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")-05*'

could do the trick and gives the full path to files on each line.

I wonder that is there a way to do some similar with find and expressions.
like:

Code:

find ( {expression to return only closest one from the files before} ), \
 ( {expression to return the disered set} ), \
( {expression to return only closest one from the files after} )

Maybe the overal results could be piped for further process by grep and wc if needed.