I am a fresher in shell script, I want to copy only new file in a directory to some other location. I am able to find new file using
"ls -ltrh | tail -1", it is showing new file. But I don't know how to add in the shell script to copy that new file to other location. Can anybody please help me this.

Is there a reason why you're not simply using rsync?


Cheers,
Tink

1 members found this post helpful.

This should help


EDIT: Argh, typo !!!didn't mean to put -l (lower L) switch. That's the one that shows total and curr/parent dirs. Sorry about that ...

Yes, there is a reason, because previous Linux admin have made shell script to take backup, but it is not storing on remote machine, & that daily backup is storing on local machine, & manually we are taking backup to remote machine using "scp". I read rsync this is very good tool. but right now we wanted to copy those tar ball also to remote machine. So in that /backup/daily_backup directory it should find the newone & copy to different machine using scp. So I am struggling regarding this.
As you said, I made a shell script as below

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/linux/temp
file=$(ls -lt|head -1)
cp $file /backup

& ran the shell script, the out put as below
#./check_move.sh
cp: cannot stat `total': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `12244': No such file or directory
it is finding 1st line which is the size of that directory & not able to copy.

for e.g plz see this below direcoty
$pwd
/home/linux/temp
$ ls -ltrh
total 12M
-rw-r--r-- 1 linux linux 9.5M Apr 30 2010 boot.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 linux linux 2.3M Jul 13 16:53 testdisk-6.12.linux26.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 linux linux 157K Jul 18 16:35 Screenshot.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 linux linux 46K Jul 18 16:42 hindu_god_ram.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 linux linux 16K Jul 19 10:24 mdstat.doc

in above directory mdstat.doc is newone & I want to copy only that file, for that I made a shell script as below

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/linux/temp
file=$(ls -ltr|tail -1)
cp $file /backup

and gave the excecute permission & ran that shell script, but it is not working. plz see the below output
#./check_move.sh
cp: invalid option -- w
Try `cp --help' for more information.

if I run as below from the terminal it is showing the new file.
$ls -ltr|tail -1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 linux linux 15872 Jul 19 10:24 mdstat.doc
but it is not copying when through shell script.
So plz tell me how can I do this.
I will be waiting for your kind reply.

Just give ,

ls -ltr|tail -2 (or) ls -ltr|tail -n 2

It will print last line of the output.
But ls -ltr|tail -1 should work, I don't no why its not working.
If anybody know this plzz let me know.

1 members found this post helpful.

rsync works either from/to local and remote machines. You can do a local copy using rsync if the destination is a local path.

In any case, if you want to retrieve the file name using the ls command, don't use the option -l, since you don't need the detailed information about the file:

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you very much master
I tried in the shell script using cp "$(ls -rt | tail -1)" /destination, it is working.
once again thank you very much for your quick reply.

Regards
Ananth

Aaah, typo in my orig post; didn't mean to put -l (lower L) switch. That's the one that shows total and curr/parent dirs. Sorry about that ...