I'm trying to use the date command as part of a bash script to make a directory based on the date. for example, currently there is a line in the script that is:
The $NAM is inputted by the user with the read command a few lines up.
What I would like to do is change the script so that the
command would cause the directory I currently call 2004_docs, "2004" or whatever the year is based on the current year.
This will prevent me having to edit the script every year, and once I have it working right, I might even change the "year" directory to a month.year combo to further make it easier to organize.

yes, just pust the result of date in your variable NAM :

> NAM=`date +%y`

and then
> mkdir /home/ewto/2004_docs/$NAM

note that you have to use ` and not ' to put the resutl of a command into a variable.

Lightning fast response ...

Thanks for your time.

ewto

ok ... messing with this a little, when I

I get an error telling me that there is no such directory...
I've tried several variations, but the only way it works is if the "year" directory is already created ... which doesn't seem to help much.

Any ideas?

Use -p flag on mkdir - that creates any directories not already in the path

mkdir -p /home/ewto/cdburner/$YR/$NAM

In friendship

QuakerJ

Well, you cannot directly create a subdirectory of a directory when none of them exists.
This is not bash programming. So you can do the following :

#!/bin/bash
YR=`date +%Y`
echo type your name
read NAM
mkdir /home/ewto/cdburner/$YR
mkdir /home/ewto/cdburner/$YR/$NAM

Thanks for your time guys ... the -p switch was the solution I needed and it's working exactly as I envisioned now.

ewto