How to convert file arrival time to specified date format?

santosh0782 · 06-26-2014, 05:25 AM

Hi,

i'll be receiving a file every half an hour, i want to read the file arrival time and convert it to ddmmyyyy hh:mm, how could we do that?

e.g
$ ls -lrt falcon_input_data_v2.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 111tcsi 111tcsi 16 Jun 26 10:30 falcon_input_data_v2.txt

every half an hour, i want to read this file arrival time and convert it to the format 26062014 10:30 , how could we do that?

could someone please help?

TenTenths · 06-26-2014, 06:23 AM

What have you tried so far?

Hint:

Code:

man ls
man cut

santosh0782 · 06-26-2014, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TenTenths

What have you tried so far?

Hint:

Code:

man ls
man cut

i have prepared small script to convert date and stuck, here is the code:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

disp_dt=$(ls -lrt /home/www/BCARD/data/falcon/falcon_input_data_v2.txt)
chk_pos=$(echo $disp_dt|awk -F ' ' '{print $6,$7,$8}')
sys_yr=$(date +'%Y')
echo "chk_pos:$chk_pos $sys_yr"

output:

./test.sh
chk_pos:Jun 26 10:30 2014

now i want to convert it to the format as 26062014 10:30

TenTenths · 06-26-2014, 06:44 AM

Your script will give the wrong answers around midnight on 31st December as you are calculating the year from the system date and not the file date.

So if your file is received at 23:58 on 31st December and your script runs at 00:05 on 1st January you'll get "Dec 31 23:58 2015" as the result, so your file will be almost a year in the future!

Depending on your distribution and version of ls you may find it supports the --time-style option. If it does then:

lsdate.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1
DATE=$(ls -l --time-style=+%d%m%Y" "%H:%M ${FILE} | cut -d " " -f 6,7)
echo ${FILE} ${DATE}

Gives:

Code:

[tt@audi ~]# ls -l phpinst.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tt tt 192 Nov  9  2013 phpinst.sh

[tt@audi ~]# ./lsdate.sh phpinst.sh
phpinst.sh 09112013 14:23

santosh0782 · 06-26-2014, 07:08 AM

Thanks a ton

its working fine. appreciated your help

jpollard · 06-26-2014, 07:38 AM

Shouldn't be using ls for that at all. The date provided is not accurate.

Try the stat command. It provides the date in full (the -t provides the number) and you can use the shell printf to format it however you want.

And forgot to mention that stat also allows you to print whichever date you want.