Script help

[Cameron Simpson]

On 19Sep2008 14:08, Dennis Kaptain <dkaptain at yahoo.com.mx> wrote:
| > > Can anyone rattle this off of the top of their head?
| > 
| > `ls -t myfile*.txt | head -1` might work for you.
| 
| ls -t by itself may give you more than one filename per line. 
| Use ls -t1
| that will assure you get only one file name output from head.

Um, no. ls only multicolumns if you point its output to a terminal;
the multicolumning was an innovation brought in BSD. Earlier lses
always single columned, and continue to single column if sent to any
non-terminal. Otherwise every script on the planet reading from ls
would break.

So, you do not need the "1" option in a pipeline, and never have.

BTW, "sed 1q" is shorter than "head -1". I've never had much truck with
"head"...
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose. - Larry Wall in <199712040054.QAA13811 at wall.org>