Ygtjki

What's the best way to handle refactoring a big file?

How do I make a variable always equal to the result of some calculations?

Help understanding this unsettling image of Titan, Epimetheus, and Saturn's rings?

What does "Its cash flow is deeply negative" mean?

How to invert MapIndexed on a ragged structure? How to construct a tree from rules?

What happens if you roll doubles 3 times then land on "Go to jail?"

Parametric curve length - calculus

How fast would a person need to move to trick the eye?

Do I need to enable Dev Hub in my PROD Org?

If/When UK leaves the EU, can a future goverment conduct a referendum to join the EU?

Which tube will fit a -(700 x 25c) wheel?

Several mode to write the symbol of a vector

What exact does MIB represent in SNMP? How is it different from OID?

Is HostGator storing my password in plaintext?

What flight has the highest ratio of time difference to flight time?

What is ( CFMCC ) on ILS approach chart?

Example of a Mathematician/Physicist whose Other Publications during their PhD eclipsed their PhD Thesis

Should I tutor a student who I know has cheated on their homework?

Sending manuscript to multiple publishers

If the heap is initialized for security, then why is the stack uninitialized?

RegionPlot of annulus gives a mesh

Skipping indices in a product

I believe this to be a fraud - hired, then asked to cash check and send cash as Bitcoin

Make solar eclipses exceedingly rare, but still have new moons

Escape a mm/dd/YY backup date in a file name

6

I have been trying to:

cp file.csv file.$(date +%D).csv

But it fails because the filenames is: file.03/27/19.csv with the slash of separate directories.

And I have been trying again to:

cp file.csv file.$(printf "%q" $(date +%D)).csv

But it still fails.

shell filenames date escape-characters slash

share|improve this question

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  You can not set a filename with slash characters: stackoverflow.com/questions/9847288/…
  
  – tres.14159
  2 days ago
  

  
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  the problem is your use of the date format using the / character. You said it yourself, the shell is seeing them as directory markers. Try one of the many other options available from date. You might be able to get the / escaped so the filename uses the character code (like putting a space in a filename), but that is often problematic.
  
  – 0xSheepdog
  2 days ago
  
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

6

I have been trying to:

cp file.csv file.$(date +%D).csv

But it fails because the filenames is: file.03/27/19.csv with the slash of separate directories.

And I have been trying again to:

cp file.csv file.$(printf "%q" $(date +%D)).csv

But it still fails.

shell filenames date escape-characters slash

share|improve this question

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  You can not set a filename with slash characters: stackoverflow.com/questions/9847288/…
  
  – tres.14159
  2 days ago
  

  
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  the problem is your use of the date format using the / character. You said it yourself, the shell is seeing them as directory markers. Try one of the many other options available from date. You might be able to get the / escaped so the filename uses the character code (like putting a space in a filename), but that is often problematic.
  
  – 0xSheepdog
  2 days ago
  
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

I have been trying to:

cp file.csv file.$(date +%D).csv

But it fails because the filenames is: file.03/27/19.csv with the slash of separate directories.

And I have been trying again to:

cp file.csv file.$(printf "%q" $(date +%D)).csv

But it still fails.

shell filenames date escape-characters slash

share|improve this question

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

cp file.csv file.$(date +%D).csv

cp file.csv file.$(printf "%q" $(date +%D)).csv

share|improve this question

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

share|improve this question

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

edited yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

asked 2 days ago

tres.14159tres.14159

4314

1 Answer
1

active

oldest

votes

20

You can't have / (byte 0x2F on ASCII-based systems) in a file name, period.

You can use characters that look like / like ∕ (U+2215 division slash) or ⁄ (U+2044 fraction slash though found in fewer of the charsets used in current locales), so you could do (provided that U+2215 character exists in the locale's charset, includes GBK, BIG5, UTF-8, GB18030):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed 's|/|∕|g').csv"

Or with some shells (zsh, bash at least):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed $'s|/|u2215|g').csv"

(here using sed instead of tr as some tr implementations including GNU tr still don't support multi-byte characters).

But you may run into problems like the file name being rendered differently in locales using a different charset from the one that was in use at the time you created the file (and of course the confusion of users when they see what looks like a slash in a file name).

My advice would be to use the standard non-ambiguous (for most people outside the US, 03/12/18 would be interpreted as the 3^rd of December 2018 for instance) YYYY-mm-dd format instead (which also helps wrt sorting):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv"

Which with many date implementations you can shorten to:

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%F).csv"

share|improve this answer

edited yesterday

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

• 
  
  
  

  
  2
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  Other characters similar to slash can also be cumbersome to type in terminal.
  
  – gronostaj
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  @gronostaj, I've added a method to specify the character based on its Unicode codepoint.
  
  – Stéphane Chazelas
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

Your Answer

StackExchange.ready(function()
var channelOptions =
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "106"
;
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
createEditor();
);

else
createEditor();

);

function createEditor()
StackExchange.prepareEditor(
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader:
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
,
onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
);



);

draft saved

draft discarded

Sign up or log in

StackExchange.ready(function ()
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
);

Sign up using Google

Sign up using Facebook

Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2funix.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f509043%2fescape-a-mm-dd-yy-backup-date-in-a-file-name%23new-answer', 'question_page');

);

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

20

You can't have / (byte 0x2F on ASCII-based systems) in a file name, period.

You can use characters that look like / like ∕ (U+2215 division slash) or ⁄ (U+2044 fraction slash though found in fewer of the charsets used in current locales), so you could do (provided that U+2215 character exists in the locale's charset, includes GBK, BIG5, UTF-8, GB18030):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed 's|/|∕|g').csv"

Or with some shells (zsh, bash at least):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed $'s|/|u2215|g').csv"

(here using sed instead of tr as some tr implementations including GNU tr still don't support multi-byte characters).

But you may run into problems like the file name being rendered differently in locales using a different charset from the one that was in use at the time you created the file (and of course the confusion of users when they see what looks like a slash in a file name).

My advice would be to use the standard non-ambiguous (for most people outside the US, 03/12/18 would be interpreted as the 3^rd of December 2018 for instance) YYYY-mm-dd format instead (which also helps wrt sorting):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv"

Which with many date implementations you can shorten to:

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%F).csv"

share|improve this answer

edited yesterday

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

• 
  
  
  

  
  2
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  Other characters similar to slash can also be cumbersome to type in terminal.
  
  – gronostaj
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  @gronostaj, I've added a method to specify the character based on its Unicode codepoint.
  
  – Stéphane Chazelas
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

20

You can't have / (byte 0x2F on ASCII-based systems) in a file name, period.

You can use characters that look like / like ∕ (U+2215 division slash) or ⁄ (U+2044 fraction slash though found in fewer of the charsets used in current locales), so you could do (provided that U+2215 character exists in the locale's charset, includes GBK, BIG5, UTF-8, GB18030):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed 's|/|∕|g').csv"

Or with some shells (zsh, bash at least):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed $'s|/|u2215|g').csv"

(here using sed instead of tr as some tr implementations including GNU tr still don't support multi-byte characters).

But you may run into problems like the file name being rendered differently in locales using a different charset from the one that was in use at the time you created the file (and of course the confusion of users when they see what looks like a slash in a file name).

My advice would be to use the standard non-ambiguous (for most people outside the US, 03/12/18 would be interpreted as the 3^rd of December 2018 for instance) YYYY-mm-dd format instead (which also helps wrt sorting):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv"

Which with many date implementations you can shorten to:

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%F).csv"

share|improve this answer

edited yesterday

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

• 
  
  
  

  
  2
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  Other characters similar to slash can also be cumbersome to type in terminal.
  
  – gronostaj
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  


• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  @gronostaj, I've added a method to specify the character based on its Unicode codepoint.
  
  – Stéphane Chazelas
  yesterday
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

You can't have / (byte 0x2F on ASCII-based systems) in a file name, period.

You can use characters that look like / like ∕ (U+2215 division slash) or ⁄ (U+2044 fraction slash though found in fewer of the charsets used in current locales), so you could do (provided that U+2215 character exists in the locale's charset, includes GBK, BIG5, UTF-8, GB18030):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed 's|/|∕|g').csv"

Or with some shells (zsh, bash at least):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed $'s|/|u2215|g').csv"

(here using sed instead of tr as some tr implementations including GNU tr still don't support multi-byte characters).

But you may run into problems like the file name being rendered differently in locales using a different charset from the one that was in use at the time you created the file (and of course the confusion of users when they see what looks like a slash in a file name).

My advice would be to use the standard non-ambiguous (for most people outside the US, 03/12/18 would be interpreted as the 3^rd of December 2018 for instance) YYYY-mm-dd format instead (which also helps wrt sorting):

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv"

Which with many date implementations you can shorten to:

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%F).csv"

share|improve this answer

edited yesterday

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed 's|/|∕|g').csv"

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%D | sed $'s|/|u2215|g').csv"

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv"

cp file.csv "file.$(date +%F).csv"

share|improve this answer

edited yesterday

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946

answered 2 days ago

Stéphane ChazelasStéphane Chazelas

312k57589946