What is the problem in that loop please?
while read result do filenames[ $j ]="$result" filedates[ $j ]=$(stat -c %y ${filenames[ $j ]} | cut -d ' ' -f1) (( j++ )) done << (ls -t *.gz) I am getting this error:
script.sh: line 13: syntax error near unexpected token `(' script.sh: line 13: `done << (ls -t *.gz)' It looks like you're attempting to use Process substitution, but not quite doing it correctly.
You need:
while read result do filenames[ $j ]="$result" filedates[ $j ]=$(stat -c %y ${filenames[ $j ]} | cut -d ' ' -f1) (( j++ )) done < <(ls -t *.gz) Note the critical differences in the spacing on the done line. You redirect with a single <; you then use the <(...) for process substitution. Using << means the code is looking for a 'here document'.
Assuming you are have GNU coreutils:
stat -c "%Y %n" * | awk '{print $2, (prev ? (prev-$1)/86400 " days" : ""); prev=$1}' Given these files:
touch file1.tar.gz touch -t 01041200 file2.tar.gz touch -t 1312311200 file3.tar.gz touch -t 1312261200 file4.tar.gz touch -t 1312211200 file5.tar.gz output:
$ stat -c "%Y %n" * | awk '{print $2, (prev ? (prev-$1)/86400 " days" : ""); prev=$1}' file1.tar.gz file2.tar.gz 5.18753 days file3.tar.gz 4 days file4.tar.gz 5 days file5.tar.gz 5 days 
(' script.sh: line 12: done << (ls -t *.gz)'