touching a file with date in past.

[Dave Walley]

Hi.

I need to find all files since a time a number of days ago. I currently use this to create a file dated at midnight

touch -t `eval "date +'%y%m%d0000'"` todayfile

and I then use find using the newer keyword.
What I now need is the ability to create a file dated midnight two days previously.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

[Fred Ruffet · Accepted solution]

Hi !

There may be two solutions for you :
. Install and use GNU date, wich is the same with more options. It may help you with options such as "date --date='2 days ago'".
. Use a script that is often mentioned here. Its name is something like calj or calij. I'm experiencing problems whith searching on HP site, but you may find threads in ITRC dealing with it.

Regards,

Fred

[Michael Tully]

The tool your after is called 'caljd' by our friend Clay Stephenson. If you use the word 'caljd' in the search engine, there are a pile of examples and in many there is an attachement of the script, which is written in perl.

[Muthukumar_5]

We can do it with scripting easily. Attached script will give the 2 days before information by calculating and exports to dayinfo shell variable. Using crontab execute this model script to change ur dayinfo variable. It will update the dayinfo with 2 days before from now.

Use the touch command as like,

touch -t `echo $dayinfo` todayfile

It will do your requirement.

NOTE: Year is calculated as yy ( 04 ) not as 2004

[Fred Ruffet]

Muthukumar,

What about bissextile years in your script ? (don't know if it's the correct word in english : year with 366 days)

Regards,

Fred