How might one copy the newest text file from a particular directory on a remote server to his local machine?
On the server itself I can do the following:
$ cat `cd /home/user/dir ; readlink -f $(ls -t | head -1)` > ~/newest.txt
This puts the content of the newest file into ~/newest.txt. However, I cannot run this over SSH because the local system tries to interpret the tick marks and $(*) commands. Id est, this does not work:
$ ssh [email protected] "cat `cd /home/user/dir ; readlink -f $(ls -t | head -1)`" > ~/newest.txt
bash: cd: /home/user/dir: No such file or directory
Connection to server.com closed.
Obviously, /home/user/dir does not exist on my local machine. I tried using SSH with the -t flag as well, this did not help. How can I get the ticks and $() to be parsed on the remote machine, not on my local machine?
As an aside, somebody smarter than me once declared that the output of ls shall not be parsed. We can safely assume for purposes of this question that the filenames contain only printable ASCII characters. However, answers which address the general case would be great as well as I do want to learn, not just get by this once.
$until the end of the line because they are printed wrong now - backticks are not displayed. I tried to edit your post but a single edit must be more than 8 characters and I couldn't do it.