How to set actual date in filename

[Daniel Schneider_3]

I want to backup an entire folder with tar. The name of the tar file should contain the actual date and time.
For example: backup-29072003-1434.tar.

I tried to use an environment variable:
export ACTDATE=date +%d%m%Y, but there was an error:
ksh: +%d%m%Y: is not an identifier

Is there anybody with a tip for me?

Thanks very much in advance

Best regards
Daniel

[Andreas Voss · Accepted solution]

Hi,

try this one:

ACTDATE=$(date +%d%m%Y)

Regards

[Michael Kelly_5]

Daniel,
you need to enclose the date ... command in backticks like this:
export ACTDATE=`date +%d%m%Y`

This tells the shell to execute the string between the backticks as a command and return the result.

HTH,
Michael.

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Try this in a script :

DATUM=`date '+%y-%m-%d.%H:%M'`
export DATUM
#
mv oldfile oldfile_${DATUM}
#

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Daniel Schneider_3]

Tahnk you all Guys for your fast help. Now it works!

Best Regards
Daniel

[RolandH]

Hey Daniel,

I want like to give you another tip. If you tar you backup first in a diretory you will get a file that is called in your case

backup-29072003-1434.tar

Then you backup this dir with your backup sw on tape. But what happens after couple of month and you want delete the backups from the first two weeks in this directory? You go in the directory and you do an ll
# ll ( I know ll shows more - short form )
...
backup-01042003-1434.tar
backup-01052003-1434.tar
backup-01062003-1434.tar
...
backup-07042003-1434.tar
...
backup-07072003-1434.tar
...
backup-29072003-1434.tar
backup-30072003-1434.tar
backup-31072003-1434.tar

You see for a month it is O.K but if you have backups for more than a month in this directory the sorting order of your LC_NUMERIC will sort in not very logical.

But if you sort first YEAR-MONTH-DAY_TIME
you get first the oldest and the the youngest backups showed by ll command.
# ll
...
backup-20030401-1434.tar
backup-20030402-1434.tar
backup-20030403-1434.tar
...
backup-20030501-1434.tar
backup-20030502-1434.tar
backup-20030503-1434.tar
...
backup-20030729-1434.tar
backup-20030730-1434.tar
backup-20030731-1434.tar
...

So sometimes it could be better to change you time variable to
ACTDATE=`date +%Y%m%d`

Does that make sense to you?

Roland

[Cheryl Griffin]

Roland, That's a very good tip.

Cheryl
(Feedback only: no points please.)