Batch programming problem

BobTheBeat

Would anyone know how to pull a file from a directory using its date as a parameter?

Basically I have a process running that pulls a file a couple times a day. There are approximately 100 files of the same type in the directory, so I cant copy by type. The file name changes every day so its name cannot be used as a parameter. Does anyone know of a way to perform this task, using the date last accessed/modified as the main parameter of the script,i.e.


Copy the file with its date accessed/modified field closest to what the current system time is.

Any suggestions are welcome...

kenmc

what sort of system are you using? win/*nix?
i'll assume *nix. otherwise you're on your own

do you just want the most recently modified one? or several of them...
ls -t will give you them sorted cronologically, newest first. so you could grab this list, take the first element out of it and then copy that....

osmethod

Quote:"Basically I have a process running that pulls a file a couple times a day. There are approximately 100 files of the same type in the directory, so I cant copy by type. The file name changes every day so its name cannot be used as a parameter. Does anyone know of a way to perform this task, using the date last accessed/modified as the main parameter of the script"

1. What system are you using...?
2. Is this 1 file per day or are there multiple files per day?
3. The 100 hundred files - are they cummulated in the same directory over time or all aon the same day?
4. The file name changes every day - some examples of the sequence would help?

osmethod

Hobbes

I think you can do what you are suggest with XCOPY.

Here is how I would do it using only batch scripts (.bat).

:// Reads SCANDIR for files (not directories) and outputs only 
:// those who match todays date to a file.
dir %scandir% /a-d | find "%DATE%" > filelist.txt

This will give you something like..

18/03/2005  09:33                 0 0.log
18/03/2005  09:33             2,048 bootstat.dat
18/03/2005  12:14                 0 filelist.txt
18/03/2005  10:31           387,897 WindowsUpdate.log

In this instance column 36 is where the file name starts. So you just need to pull that out. The problem now is you need a program to parse that file.

Personally I would go with ANT. It can do this sort of thing easy.

rsynnott

Hobbes wrote:

I think you can do what you are suggest with XCOPY.

Here is how I would do it using only batch scripts (.bat).

:// Reads SCANDIR for files (not directories) and outputs only 
:// those who match todays date to a file.
dir %scandir% /a-d | find "%DATE%" > filelist.txt

Eek. Didn't know anyone did this sort of thing on Windows

Capt'n Midnight

you might want to add /T and /AA (not backed up) to the dir command above
and /m (don't copy again) to the xcopy one

/T Controls which time field displayed or used for sorting timefield
C Creation
A Last Access
W Last Written

Another nasty hack that used to work on NT4 - produces recent.ext as a copy of the most recent file (you have to change the extension for obvious reasons)
xcopy *.EXT Recent.TXE /m

BobTheBeat

Thanks guys for your feedback. Its windows machine Im gonna be runnin this on, eek is right! :eek:

Will try the XCOPY routine and see how I get on... Thanks mate