Linux – Getting files for the current date in Linux

datefileslinuxtimestamps

Usually the date +%d gives the output 08 for the current date, 08/10/2017. But when I do the ls -lrt on a path, the date format is like Oct 8 15:03, so, how do I get the files of the current date?

I'm using the command

ls -lrt XYZ.LOG* |grep "$(date +'%b %d')" |awk '{print $9}'

but it's not giving me the file of today's date (08/10/2017) although it gives me correct output for the dates 10 – 31st of any month.

Best Answer

This is cheating a bit, but it works.

First create an empty reference file with a specific timestamp, namely midnight:

touch -d "$(date +%FT00:00:00)" /tmp/midnight

Then find files that are newer than this file:

find . -type f -newer /tmp/midnight

If you want ls-like output from find rather than just the pathnames:

find . -type f -newer /tmp/midnight -ls

If you want to find files matching the pattern XYZ.LOG*:

find . -type f -name 'XYZ.LOG*' -newer /tmp/midnight -ls

If you have GNU find, you may bypass the temporary file and use

find . -type f -newermt 0

to get files modified since midnight.

Related: Why *not* parse `ls`?

Related Solutions

Date Command ‘1 Month Ago’ Option – How It Works

- 1 month will subtract one from the month number, and then if the resulting date is not valid (February 30, for example), adjust it so that it is valid. So December 31 - 1 month is December 1, not a day in November, and March 31 - 1 month is March 3 (unless executed in a leap year).

Here's quote from the info page for Gnu date (which is the date version which implements this syntax), which includes a good suggestion to make the arithmetic more robust:

The fuzz in units can cause problems with relative items. For example, 2003-07-31 -1 month might evaluate to 2003-07-01, because 2003-06-31 is an invalid date. To determine the previous month more reliably, you can ask for the month before the 15th of the current month. For example:

    $ date -R
    Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:02:39 -0700
    $ date --date='-1 month' +'Last month was %B?'
    Last month was July?
    $ date --date="$(date +%Y-%m-15) -1 month" +'Last month was %B!'
    Last month was June!

Another warning, also quoted from the info page:

Also, take care when manipulating dates around clock changes such as daylight saving leaps. In a few cases these have added or subtracted as much as 24 hours from the clock, so it is often wise to adopt universal time by setting the TZ environment variable to UTC0 before embarking on calendrical calculations.

Best Answer

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Date Command ‘1 Month Ago’ Option – How It Works

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