Timestamp format in HP-UX

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

I am on HP-UX B.11.11 OS. My requirement is to display a list of directories (not files) and the last modified time format should be DD-MON-YYYY HH:MI:SS AM/PM. I am able to get the list using either

   ls -lF | grep /

OR

   ls -ld -- */

 but I am unable to set the time format as I want. The --full-time parameter doesn't work in HP-UX, and HP-UX doesn't have stat as well.

Questions:

  1. I can try with Perl (located at /usr/bin/perl) but I am not very well versed with it. Could anyone please provide me a script to get the same output as that of ls -ld */

  2. Is there any other way to display this information without using C or Perl, by just using standard commands and parameters?

  3. I was wondering how is WinSCP able to display the full date/time format in the UI ? Anyone knows what command it uses internally to display the directory contents in the UI?

Any help is appreciated.

2

You would be best looking at the stat command to get the information you want in the format you want. The output of ls is slightly fickle. If a file is older than 6 months it may display a day/month/year rather than a day.month/time which might confused your process.

Using stat and the appropriate flags, you can build the time in a suitably portable way.

Have a go and let us know if you get stuck and we will try to help you.

Kind regards,
Robin

1 Like
3

SysV-derived Unix does not have a stat command. Only the latest Solaris 11 has got it.
I would try perl.

man perl

leads to

man perlfunc

for the stat() and localtime() functions.
I pasted the examples, and with a little trial and error I got

#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach $argfile (@ARGV) {
    ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
        $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks) = stat($argfile);
    ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime($mtime);
    printf "%s-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d %s\n", 
        $year+1900, $mon+1, $mday, $hour, $min, $sec, $argfile;
}

Now you can make it executable and run it with

/path/to/perlscript */
find . -type d -exec /path/to/perlscript {} +
2 Likes
4

Thanks for looking into it. I executed the script you provided but ended up with some errors. It might be a formatting error from my side, since I am pretty new to Unix/Perl. This is what I got:

$ /usr/bin/perl
foreach $argfile (@
ARGV) {
    ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
        $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks) = stat($argfile);
    ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime($mtime);
    printf "%s-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d %s\n",
        $year+1900, $mon+1, $mday, $hour, $min, $sec, $argfile;
}
syntax error at - line 1, near "ARGV) "
syntax error at - line 7, near "}"
Execution of - aborted due to compilation errors.
5 
# is now
foreach $argfile (@
ARGV) {

# should be
foreach $argfile (@ARGV) {
# no line feeds
6

Thanks @rbatte1 and @MadeInGermany

I posted the question in Unix StackExchange as well, and found the solution. I have posted the final script there in case it's helpful for others with same issue/question.

I am unable to paste the web link to the StackExchange thread here since I guess I have to have at least 5 posts, which I don't. I wish I was able to provide the link so that it would have been helpful to others stumbling on the post in future.

---------- Post updated at 06:24 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:23 PM ----------

Thanks @rbatte1 for your help as well, but unfortunately even stat is not available in HP-UX version we have.