simple shell script, ls while loop, can't use a file

Madpanda

Trying to create a simple shell script which will do something like

while 1 (i want to create an infinite loop until broken out of)
ls -ltr filename*
sleep 100

I need to run this from a linux command line and can't read from a file. I thought there was a way to do this but I haven't been able to get it working.

grouch993

quote the regular expression so the shell doesn't try to interpret the asterisk. Some shells use back ticks to force a command to run.

`ls -ltr "filename*"`

Do you want to assign the results to a variable or something to be able to test results?

Madpanda

Nope i just want to be able to run ls -ltr file* and have it output to terminal every minute or so, without putting an actual shell script on the machine.

shwaip

while true; do ls filename*; sleep 100; done

from:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_09_02.html

notmetalenough

Madpanda wrote: »

Nope i just want to be able to run ls -ltr file* and have it output to terminal every minute or so, without putting an actual shell script on the machine.

Or you could use watch.
http://ss64.com/bash/watch.html