Find out if a file was modified in the last 2 minutes....

cricos · 04-06-2005, 10:33 AM

Hello,

Newbie and need some help with a shell script to find out if a file was modified in the last n minutes (for example 2 minutes). Much appreciated.

Thank you
cricos

keefaz · 04-06-2005, 10:51 AM

I would use the find command (maybe there is a better way ?)

Code:

#!/bin/bash
dir="/path/to/dir/of/the/file"
name="myfile"

test=$(find $dir -name "$name"  -mmin -2 -maxdepth 1)
[ ! -z $test ] && echo "$name was modified in the last 2 minutes"

puffinman · 04-06-2005, 11:43 AM

Here's something a little more flexible I threw together. This will search the current directory for files modified in the last n minutes, where n is specified as the command argument.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# test for files recently modified

use warnings;
use strict;
use File::List;
use Cwd;

# the platform independent way to get a directory listing
# i'm on a windows machine right now :(
my $dir=getcwd;
my $search = new File::List($dir);
my @files  = @{ $search->find("*") };

# the linux way
# (uncomment this line if you're on linux
#  and dont want to install File::List)
# my @files = `ls`;

# pass in number of minutes as argument
my $age_query = shift or die "Usage: $0 minutes";

foreach (@files) {
  my $age_in_days = -M $_;
  my $age_in_minutes = $age_in_days * 24 * 60;
  print "$_\n" if $age_in_minutes < $age_query;
}

puffinman · 04-06-2005, 12:05 PM

Or here's a super condensed linux only version more in the perl spirit...

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl                                                                 
foreach (`ls`) { chomp; print "$_\n" if (-M $_)*24*60 < $ARGV[0] }

cricos · 04-06-2005, 02:52 PM

Thanks guys but I am looking for something shell script only. Perl is all greek to me.
Actually is better to describe what I am trying to do. My script is going to loop through a directory read each file and find out if the file is used by somebody else or another process (ftp by example). If no, I take that file and process it. That's all.

Thanks again for help.

puffinman · 04-06-2005, 02:57 PM

That's funny, because bash scripts look as alien to me as perl does to bash scripters! You can still use my code up there, just invoke the perl script in the shell script. Perl is standard in linux, I'm sure you have it. It will return you the list of files on stdout.