Exclude incomplete files in ls -rlt

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,

I am bit puzzled with this requirement where I need to list the files in a directory. However, files are being continuously written to this folder through FTP. Hence I need to exclude the file which is being written at the time of listing the directory. I thought of using file time stamp. I can list files with timestamps 5 minutes before the time I run ls -lrt command. I believe time taken to ftp the file will not take more than 5 minutes based on my observation.
I am not sure how do I list file based on time. Any help on this is highly appreciated. If there is any other option, please let me know.

Thanks
Angshuman

2

If your system supports it, you can use find <dir> -mmin -5

3

Hi Subbeh,

Thank you for your reply. I am using HPUNIX and it does not support mmin.

Thanks
Angshuman

---------- Post updated at 04:21 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:23 PM ----------

Hi All,

Is there any other way to achieve this as the suggestion provided by Subbeh does not work for me.

Thanks
Angshuman

4

You could try to identify open files by using lsof on that directory, and then exclude those.

5

Or fuser .

6

Could I suggest a simple reference file:-

touch my-ref-file
sleep 5
find dir ! -newer my-ref-file

The sleep is just to ensure that at least some further file growth from an incoming FTP will occur. Slower than that, then I would expect the FTP to timeout anyway.

I hope that this helps,
Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK