Pleaser help... Compare file names then move to new directory: How do I compare the files in different directories to see if they are the same? I need to move the new files to another directory if the files have the same names. /full/path/directory/old/file_mmddyyyy.txt /full/path/directory/new/file_mmddyyyy.txt If new files have the same names then move them (file_*.txt) from /full/path/directory/new to /full/path/directory/archive Thank you. ihsail

I assume you only want to compare filenames whether they are the same and then move them to another directory... you could use a "for loop" , iterate over the files in /full/path/directory/old, for i in /full/path/directory/old/* do if [ -e /full/path/directory/new/$i ];then # the if condition checks for file # exist, #move to archive done The above is not the actual working code. It's just an idea for you.

Here's the exact way to do the filename comparison between two directories: cd /usr/home/data_files/archive ls - l *.dat > all_archive_files.txt archive_list=/usr/home/data_files/archive/all_archive_files.txt for archive_file in `cat $archive_list` do echo $archive_file cd /usr/home/data_files/ if [ -f $archive_file ]; then echo "This filename [$archive_file] exists" mv $archive_file /usr/home/data_files/existing_files else echo "The filename [$archive_file] does not exist" fi done ihsail