Below is a korn shell script which i would like under the CHK_FILES line to be able to look for files which have a date format eg 14112002 (which change daily) i would then like to pass these files down the script so i end up with 141102.hst file. Any help would be good. #!/usr/bin/ksh # # Program : chk_interface_hstfiles # # Date : 13th November, 2002 # # Author : Jon # # Description : This script checks for the existance of date specifix hst files # and emails a notification to mail_acount. # # ##################################################################################### # Initialise global variables PROGNAME=${0##*/} HOSTNAME=`hostname` CTL_DIR=/usr/local/etc LOG_DIR=/usr/local/logs BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin LOGFILE=${LOG_DIR}/${PROGNAME}.log exec > ${LOGFILE} 2>&1 echo "`date` : Started." CHK_FILES= ( I wan to be able to have a date in here ) CHK_DIR=/jon/inbound/interfaces FOUND=0 for file in ${CHK_FILES} do if [[ -f "${CHK_DIR}/${file}.hst" ]] then echo "Found interface file ${file}.hst" FOUND=1 fi done if [[ $FOUND > 0 ]] then mailx -s "${PROGNAME}: Found Interface Files on ${HOSTNAME}" jon < ${LOGFILE} else mailx -s "${PROGNAME}: No Interface Files on ${HOSTNAME}" jon < ${LOGFILE} fi echo "`date`: Finished."

Not clear on exactly what you are asking for? For the CHK_FILES= line, are you asking how to set CHK_FILES to the current date in your desired format? That would be: CHK_FILES=`date +%d%m%Y` Be sure to use backquotes, not normal single quotes. With capital Y you get the 4 digit year. WHen you want the 2 digit year, use small y. run "man date" to see all the options.

Thankyou for the follow up , this script is run daily to chek for exsitence of .hst files , so when the script runs i need the script to check for matching date in the CHK_FILES= this output needs to be passed to if [[ -f "${CHK_DIR}/${date}.hst" ]] where date is output from CHK_FILES.