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I have a camera which records files every day. These mp4 files always start with yy-mm-dd. I want to write a bash script to search and display and check whether or not there has been a recording today.

I've come up with this so far:

#! /bin/sh
# start met datum weg te schrijven in variable now met notering jj-mm-dd

now=$(date --rfc-3339=date)`

# regels voor Doorbird

cd /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams
cd Doorbird
cd videos
cd OOKJv2iZ0r
cd 8MaU67FrBu80

[ -f "/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/Doorbird/videos/OOKJv2iZ0r/8MaU67FrBu80/"$now"*" ] && echo "Doorbird OK."
[ ! -f "/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/Doorbird/videos/OOKJv2iZ0r/8MaU67FrBu80/"$now"*" ] && echo "Doorbird NOK."

but this only displays Doorbird NOK although there are files which start with yy-mm-dd in the above-mentioned folder.

With another camera that sorts files differently I was able to perform a directory search for the date-variable but without the *-wildcard without any problems. The code for that one was:

# regels voor Tuin
cd /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams
cd 6J0091EPAG73D8B
[ -d "/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/6J0091EPAG73D8B/"$now"" ] && echo "Tuin OK."
[ ! -d "/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/6J0091EPAG73D8B/"$now"" ] && echo "Tuin NOK."

Here I get Tuin OK when the directory is present or Tuin NOK when it's not.

Clearly I'm missing something here. I tried looking up the wildcard placement throughout this site to no avail.

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  • Have you looked at the find command? man find I use it to find files by name and to find files by date. find -L . -name "foo*" I include path in find command. find /mnt/data -type f -name "*~" -print And older log files: find /var/log/ -name *.gz* -type f -atime +10 -print You can use data in file name with wildcard. Better to use labels, not UUIDs. Labels I understand, UUIDs I do not. lsblk -e 7 -o name,fstype,size,fsused,label,partlabel,mountpoint,uuid,partuuid askubuntu.com/questions/147319/… Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 15:35
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    date --rfc-3339=date returns "yyyy-mm-dd". For "yy-mm-dd", use date +%y-%m-%d. Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 16:30

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I can see a number of problems with the code.

First of all you're looking for files with a date format of YY-MM-DD but the date --rfc-3339=date command returns a date format of YYYY-MM-DD. Try it:

date --rfc-3339=date
2021-12-10

Secondly, the [ -f {file} ] structure expects precisely one file. The presence of the wildcard * means your pattern would find all matching files, not just one - unless there was precisely one to be found.

Thirdly, but of less importance, if you're going to use cd to have your script change its directory you don't need a full path in the [ -f {file} ] structure - you're already in the right place.

Finally for now, you've tagged with but you've declared your script as a sh script. If you want to use bash you should mark it as such on the first line of the script (#!/bin/bash). However, in this case you're not using any bash-specific idioms so you could continue with sh:

#!/bin/sh
# start met datum weg te schrijven in variable now met notering jj-mm-dd

now=$(date +'%y-%m-%d')    # format "YY-MM-DD"

# regels voor Doorbird
cd /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams &&
  cd Doorbird &&
  cd videos &&
  cd OOKJv2iZ0r &&
  cd 8MaU67FrBu80 || exit

# We're now in the right place so use short filenames
numberOfFiles=$(find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "${now}*" -printf . | wc -c)

if [ "$numberOfFiles" -gt 0 ]
then
    echo "Doorbird OK"
else
    echo "Doorbird NOK."
fi

If you want to avoid the multiple cd commands you could give the full directory path to find:

numberOfFiles=$(
    find /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/Doorbird/videos/OOKJv2iZ0r/8MaU67FrBu80 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "${now}* -printf ." |
    wc -c
)

Or even declare a variable containing the path and reference it through that

dir=/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-89755130-b502-4d16-943d-6ca02a695f09/Cams/Doorbird/videos/OOKJv2iZ0r/8MaU67FrBu80
# ...
numberOfFiles=$(find "$dir" -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "${now}*" -printf . | wc -c)
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  • Or while you're at using GNUisms: if find ... -name "$now*" -print -quit | grep -q '^'; then... as you don't need to know how many there are, just that there are any. Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 18:05

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