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I found an SO called using Find/Grep to search files between specific time of day

Based on that and a Unix SE called Grep command to find files containing text string and move them I ended up with:

find . -type f -mtime -20 | grep -v -e " \(0[012345]\|18\|19\|2[0123]\)" | xargs mv -t daytime/

But it's moving ALL the files. Does it make a difference that I'm using Ubuntu?

All I want to do is move all files between 6am and 6pm to another directory. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

1 Answer 1

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Actually, find already has this functionality:

find . -newermt "2013-01-01 00:00:00" ! -newermt "2013-01-02 00:00:00"

From the manpage:

-newerXY reference
       Compares  the timestamp of the current file with reference.  The
       reference argument is normally the name of a file  (and  one  of
       its  timestamps is used for the comparison) but it may also be a
       string describing an absolute time.  X and  Y  are  placeholders
       for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging
       to how reference is used for the comparison.

       a   The access time of the file reference
       B   The birth time of the file reference
       c   The inode status change time of reference
       m   The modification time of the file reference
       t   reference is interpreted directly as a time

       Some combinations are invalid; for example, it is invalid for  X
       to  be t.  Some combinations are not implemented on all systems;
       for example B is not supported on all systems.  If an invalid or
       unsupported  combination  of  XY  is  specified,  a  fatal error
       results.  Time specifications are interpreted as for  the  argu‐
       ment  to the -d option of GNU date.  If you try to use the birth
       time of a reference file, and the birth time  cannot  be  deter‐
       mined,  a  fatal  error  message results.  If you specify a test
       which refers to the birth time of  files  being  examined,  this
       test will fail for any files where the birth time is unknown.
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  • Thanks @msdl, I didn't realise that. It seems to only act on todays date when give "08:00:00" without the date, so it seems it needs one day at a time. But that'll do me - thanks! Apr 9, 2013 at 11:35
  • So how can i get those files printed in the terminal? i tried this command but it didn't print anything for me!
    – Kulasangar
    Nov 9, 2014 at 9:14

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