LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Bash question

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I'm trying to put the date in the name of my file but cant seem to get it I just end up with the word date in the file instead of the date. my script looks like this.
#!/bin/bash
x="/var/log/system/"
y=date
z=${y:11:8}
top > $x$y.txt

I think your variable declaration needs some work.

Here's a snippet from a script I wrote to backup my blog database. First, I created a directory to hold the backup, then I ran mysqldump and dumped the backup into that variable.

I am not a coder and I'm sure there was a better way, but this worked. In this case, I wanted the hour and minute in the directory name.

Code:

#Set the variable DATE



DATE=1



#Define now as today’s day-month-year-hour-minute.



DATE=$(date +%m-%d-%Y-%H-%M)



#Make the directory to hold the backup file.



mkdir /root/backups/sql/$DATE

See this: http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...ners-Guide.pdf. It's excellent.

Check out the man page for date

Code:

#! /bin/bash

pre="/var/log/system/"

post=`date '+%Y:%m:%d'`

fname="description-"

ext=".txt"

echo "$pre$fname$post$ext"

Output:

Code:

/var/log/system/description-2011:4:11.txt

Give this a try and alter as necessary.

So the examples provided by other's are where you need to go, but in relation to your own script lines, the following is your error:

Code:

y=date  # this says to set y equal to the string 'date'



y=$(date)  # whereas this says to execute the command (could be a function of your own as well) and assign the value returned to y

Hope that helps