Question

I am writing shell script first time, I want to download latest create file from FTP.
I want to download latest file of specific folder. Below is my code for that. But it is downloading all the files of the folder not the latest one.

ftp -in ftp.abc.com << SCRIPTEND
user xyz xyz
binary
cd Rpts/
mget ls -t -r | tail -n 1
quit
SCRIPTEND

help me with this, please?

Answer 1

Try using wget or lftp utility instead, it compares file time/date and AFAIR its purpose is ftp scripting. Switch to ssh/rsync if possible, you can read a bit about lftp instead of rsync here:

https://serverfault.com/questions/24622/how-to-use-rsync-over-ftp

Probably the easiest way is to link last version on server side to “current”, and always get the file pointed. If you’re not admin of the server, you need to list all files with date/time, grab the information, parse it, decide which one is newest, in the meantime state on the server can change, and you find yourself in more complicated solution than it’s worth.

The point is, that “ls” sorts output in some way, and time may not be default. There are switches to sort it e.g. base on modification time, however even when server responds with OK on ls -t , you can’t be sure it really supports sorting, it can just ignore all switches and always return the same list, that’s why admins usually use “current” link (ln -s). If there’s no “current”, to make sure you have the right file, you need to parse list anyway ( ls -al ).

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/shell-tools.html