Hello All,
For the past few months I have been working on my first linux project. I have been googling and searching forum after forum for all my questions and have almost always found the best answers here... so now that I am officially stumped, my first question is the following: (I will try to be as detailed as possible)

In this particular script I am trying to search a directory and create a report. The files in this directory, each begin with a timestamp followed by a name and separated with a "." (for example: 1263358800.name.ext)

Here is a snippet of the problem area:

allfiles="`find /path/to/directory -maxdepth 1 -type f`"
for file in $allfiles
do
allfilesarray[$A]=${file##/*/}
let "A = $A + 1"
done

for file in ${allfilesarray[*]}
do
filedate="`echo "$file" | cut -d'.' -f1`"
if [ "$filedate" -ge "$STARTDATE" ] && [ "$filedate" -le "$ENDDATE" ]
then
withinrange[$B]=${file}
let "B = $B + 1"
else
echo "File out of Range"
fi
done



If I echo the $filedate, $STARTDATE and $ENDDATE they are all correct. However when I run the script all files are shown as "File out of Range", meaning that the script doesnt recognize the comparisons in my "if" statement. The variables are integers so I am using "-ge" and "-le". but for some reason I cant shake the "File out of Range" phenomenon.

Can anyone help?

Why have you quoted the variables ? Surely it will treat anything between quotes as a string and obviously $filedate is not an integer and neither is $STARTDATE. So it does what it can and drops through to the else clause.
But I'm no bash magician ...

Thanks for your quick reply smoker, I have tried without quotations and i get the same result. I have actually read that variables "Should" generally always be in quotes. Is this wrong?

I have also tried curly's such as ${filedate} or ${STARTDATE}. These are all things I have tried from reading other posts from this forum as well as others, but script still doesn't seem to work...

Any other ideas??

The quoting you use should not be a problem. Variables inside double quotes are replaced with their stored value. Single quoted strings do not behave the same. So, '$var' would echo $var, but "$var" would echo the value stored in the var variable. Using double quotes ensures that stored values containing spaces will be treated as a single value, preventing word splitting. Curly braces are for when your variable names are used without white space surrounding them. For instance, $ab. If 'a' is the variable name, bash will not see it, unless you enclose the variable within curly braces: ${a}b. Referencing array values also requires curly braces, as your code above shows. Your quoted variables in your if test should not be a problem, so long as they contain integer values. The test still works with or without the quotes.

penguiniator, thanks for that great reply! That was very informative and i will keep it under my belt from now on

Unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem though

I just cant figure out why the script wont see that "$filedate" is between "$STARTDATE" and "$ENDDATE"

To see what is going on in your script, you may want to echo $STARTDATE, $ENDDATE and $filedate.

Run the script with sh -x yourscript.

whatever the problem is, it will become obvious.

jlinkels

jlinkels,

I dont know if words can explain what just happenned! It felt like the universe opened up and shone pillars of light on me annointing me with the knowledge of time or something...

For the record, the snippet i posted here works great. Believe it or not its another part of the script that is the problem..

Thanks jlinkels for the great tip! This forum is the best.

cheers,
E