Re: [tlug] Setting Date Variable for Cron Job

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Muller <acmuller@example.com> writes:

cp -f /home/chuck/.emacs /home/chuck/Documents/programming/emacs-`date+"%Y%m%d"`.txt

(1) As a matter of style, you should put the `+' inside the "".
(2) You don't need the "".
(3) You _do_ need a space between the "data" and the "+" -- it's
    protected by the backquotes, so it doesn't break up the file name.
(4) You should get in the habit of doing this in stages, eg

TIMESTAMP=`date+"%Y%m%d"`
cp -f /home/chuck/.emacs /home/chuck/Documents/programming/emacs-$TIMESTAMP.txt

The reason is that as you start doing more complex things, you'll want
to manipulate the same file later, eg

TIMESTAMP=`date+"%Y%m%d"`
cp -f /home/chuck/.emacs /home/chuck/Documents/programming/emacs-$TIMESTAMP.txt
gzip -9 /home/chuck/Documents/programming/emacs-$TIMESTAMP.txt

There are ways to do this without the variable, but they're either
less reliable, or harder to understand and debug.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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