Hi, On 16/07/2015 10:23 PM, Haines Brown wrote: > Sorry for this elementary question. I want to do sequential copies with > a command like this: $ cp --backup=t file .../destination/file. When > periodically run it produces file, file.~1~, file.~2~, etc. > > How do I get rid of the "~" so that the backups are file.1, file.2, > etc.?
Hmm, okay, so you are copying potentially unchanged files to new version numbers in a destination directory.. Not sure if this is relevant enough, but I have a method to keep "source" files -- in this case .forward files in a controlled directory; if any of these differ from the target locations, then I save the target location file with a dated version and copy in the controlled source copy. This way I only get new files if they are changed, you could use a similar method for the backups, that is only copying files to the backup area if they are different to the current copy in the source area. # cat fix_dot_forward.sh #!/bin/sh PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin ( wrk_dir=/backup/.forward-wrk for fix_name in user1 user2 user3 do HOME_DIR=$(grep ^${fix_name}: /etc/passwd|cut -d: -f6) md5_1=$(md5sum $HOME_DIR/.forward|cut -d\ -f1) md5_2=$(md5sum $wrk_dir/$fix_name/.forward|cut -d\ -f1) if [ "$md5_1" != "$md5_2" ] then echo "The .forward file has changed for: "$fix_name diff $HOME_DIR/.forward $wrk_dir/$fix_name/.forward|sed 's/^/ /' cp -p $HOME_DIR/.forward $HOME_DIR/${fix_name}.forward.$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M) cp -p $wrk_dir/$fix_name/.forward $HOME_DIR/ fi done ) That gives me file versions and history in a fairly simple way; all in the same file system area, not using any kind of version control system other than simple file names. Another option might be to use the %s date format for the file name suffix to get the seconds since epoch with the file itself giving the reference date/time value used for the suffix. for filex in $(ls);do cp -p $filex ${filex}.$(date -r $filex +%s);done Cheers AndrewM -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/55a8ded8.1080...@affinityvision.com.au