CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshell
Dan
Dan

Reputation: 378

How to check if file exists without the full name of the file

I'm trying to make a linux script that will be updating some lists, with a timestamp on them.

The part I'm struggling is this:

for dir in $(ls)
do
    echo $dir
done

I get:

noreply-unsch-simco 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-simcoe 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-sudbury-nbay 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-test 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-thunderbay 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-toronto 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

noreply-unsch-york 2014-03-17-14:20:41.txt

What I want to do is remove the older files (if they are present), because every time my script runs, it makes a new file with a new timestamp.

So basically I want to know how to search for files using only the beginning part of the name (everything before the timestamp).

I'm new to this. Help me kindly please

EDIT: Ok, so I looked at the comment but I'm getting error. Here's my full code.

#!/bin/bash
cd /var/lib/mailman/lists/
variable=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S")

for dir in $(ls)
do
    echo $dir
    rm /root/Desktop/Dan/Lists/$dir-*
    echo echo | cat | list_members $dir/ > /root/Desktop/Dan/Lists/$dir" "$variable.txt
done

I'm getting a directory not found error.

EDIT I just had to take away the '-'

 rm /root/Desktop/Dan/Lists/$dir*

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 176

Answers (1)

Chris Maes
Chris Maes

Reputation: 37792

if you want to remove all files beginning with a certain extension you can do this:

rm noreply-unsch-*

this will remove all files matching that pattern. If you want to do something more than just removing ; you can change your loop into:

for filename in noreply-unsch-*.txt; do
    #something
    rm $filename
done

Upvotes: 5

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