topic Re: Touch the files in Operating System - Linux

Touch the files

viseshu — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:34:39 GMT

When i give ll -t , i will get the most recent files.
I need to change the timestamp of particular filetype to that of the oldest file ( actually 2min later than the oldest file)
for example:
if i hav 2 files: file1,file2
file1 is having time stamp of 12:00
file2 is having time stamp of 9:00

i need the time stamp of file1 to be changed to 9:02

pls help

Re: Touch the files

Peter Godron — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:40:20 GMT

Hi,
see "man touch"
touch -t 200702190902 file1

Re: Touch the files

viseshu — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:27:16 GMT

Thanks for the help!! but the time i have mentioned is just an example. Can you please put it in generic terms...Herez the description again

I need to touch the recent file in a path with a time stamp, 2 minutes newer than the older file.

Re: Touch the files

Peter Godron — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:49:31 GMT

Hi,

#!/usr/bin/sh
file=`ls -t1 $1| tail -1`
file2=`ls -t1 $1| tail -2 | head -1`
ar -r foo $1/$file
timer=`tail -1 foo | awk -F' ' '{print $2}'`
echo "Original file $file " `echo "0d$timer=Y" | adb | tr -d '\011'`
timer=`expr $timer + 120`
newdate=`echo "0d$timer=Y" | adb | tr -d '\011' `
year=`echo $newdate | awk '{print $1}'`
month=`echo $newdate | awk '{print $2}'`
day=`echo $newdate | awk '{print $3}'`
time=`echo $newdate | awk '{print $4}'`
hour=`echo $time | awk -F':' '{print $1}'`
min=`echo $time | awk -F':' '{print $2}'`

typeset -u mmm=`echo $month`
typeset -u months=`cal $year | grep "[A-Z][a-z][a-z]"`
i=1
for mon in $months
do
if [ "$mon" != "$mmm" ]
then
i=`expr $i + 1`
else
typeset -xZ2 i
month=$i
fi
done
echo "touch -t $year$month$day$hour$min $1/$file2"

Assuming your files are in ./test
$ ll ./test
total 0
-rw-rw-rw- 1 xxxxxxxx users 0 Feb 20 12:00 file1
-rw-rw-rw- 1 xxxxxxxx users 0 Feb 20 09:00 file2
$

Running:
./a.sh ./test
Original file file2 2007 Feb 20 09:00:00
touch -t 200702200902 ./test/file1
$

Have you thought about reversing the date listing with ls -lrt ?

Please also read:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33 on how to reward any useful answers given to your questions.

Re: Touch the files

James R. Ferguson — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:54:43 GMT

Hi:

# perl -wle '$f1=shift;$f2=shift;$t=(stat($f1))[9]-120;utime($t,$t,$f2)' file1 file2

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Touch the files

James R. Ferguson — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:00:47 GMT

Hi (again):

Oops, you want 'file' to be timestamped 2-minutes *later* than 'file2', so:

# perl -wle '$f1=shift;$f2=shift;$t=(stat($f2))[9]+120;utime($t,$t,$f1)' file1 file2

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Touch the files

Peter Godron — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:48:38 GMT

Viseshu,
I assume this problem is now resolved ?

Could you please complete the thread by awarding points to helpful answers and summarising the solution for you.

This will help resolution of similar problems in the future.

Re: Touch the files

Pavitra — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:50:49 GMT

ls -rt $PATH|head -1|read FILE
then if i give
touch -r FILE FILE1
the timestamp will be changed..

But i dont want this FILE as reference. i want its timestamp to be taken as reference since while touchin the file, the reference file may b moved by some other job..
pls help

Re: Touch the files

Dennis Handly — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:33:05 GMT

>Pavitra: But i dont want this FILE as reference.

(Are you somehow the author too?)

If you want it 2 minutes later, you can't use touch -r.

>i want its timestamp to be taken as reference since while touching the file, the reference file may be moved by some other job

This can happen in any of the above scenarios. You will have to legislate that you can't have another job, or the window is so small it won't matter. With solutions by Peter and JRF, the window will be very small, after your reference file is found. Of course if you have to change the time on N files, you may have to create a dummy reference file to use for the N other files.