I know what I am about to propose could probably be taken care of by some subversion software, but I'd like to try it with a bash script and crontab.

I have a server setup which my co-workers use to share activities, lesson plans, etc for our classes. It works well but it is hard to keep track of newly added material. I've currently got it set up so that each coworker has their own /home/user directory, each with 3 directories - activities, assessments, outlines. I'd like to create a 4th directory called something like /home/user/new additions. I'd then like to make a bash script that would check the other directories daily for newly added material and create a link from that material in the new additions folder and then delete those links after a week or so. I've only got a little bash scripting experience and I idea how to do this. Can anyone make some suggestions?

Thanks a lot.

by the way, do you have anything started yet?

Ah, no. I really have no idea how to do this. I was thinking of something along the lines of using the output from ls to get a creation date for the file and then comparing that to the current system time. If thats is less than 7 days, a link will be created in the directory I talked about. Now, exactly how to do that....

last time i used to do this:

create a hidden file (or any regular file) by touching it in the directory you want to check for new files.

eg touch .dummy

This will create a dummy file with a timestamp
Then i will use the find command with the -newer switch to check for new files created after .dummy.

you can give this a try.

you could use -exec of the find command (or xargs) to create links after finding newer files..

Then to delete those links after a week, you can use -mtime of the find command.

just some suggestions.

I think I followed that. Thanks for the help. I'll try out those suggestions and get back to you if I have any problems. Thanks

With a little bit of tweaking you could even recycle say http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...80#post2420380