Get all files contains date value less than an input date

Question

I have 1000's of files .txt files in a folder:

The ls output of the folder looks like:

2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-03-06-23.55.05.436-+0000_2016-09-07-05.31.47.105-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-03-06-23.55.05.436-+0000_2016-09-07-05.27.47.000-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-03-06-23.55.05.436-+0000_2016-09-07-05.25.46.891-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-03-06-23.55.05.436-+0000_2016-09-07-05.23.46.788-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.07.21.784-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.05.22.541-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.02.41.320-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-06.22.49.534-+0000_2016-07-27-07.01.32.824-+0000.txt

Now, I want to list all files that have date value less than an input date

For eg:

My Input date is: 2016-08-11

I want the result:

2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.07.21.784-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.05.22.541-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-07.02.41.320-+0000_2016-07-27-07.02.41.320-+0000.txt
2-20160329050200862185.instan-methodstack_2016-04-27-06.22.49.534-+0000_2016-07-27-07.01.32.824-+0000.txt

The comparison date value has to check after the string starting with +0000_

I tried multiple commands, but nothing worked.

ls | awk ' { i = substr($0, 73, 10); cond = "2015-09-07"; if expr "$i" "<" "$cond" > /dev/null; then print($0); fi }'
ls | awk ' { i = substr($0, 73, 10); if ( (date -d i +"%Y%m%d") -lt 20160907 ) print($0) endif; print("\n") }'

Please help.

Answer 1

Assuming parsing ls is not error prone in this case:

ls | awk '{ i = substr($0, 73, 10); if(i < "2016-08-11") print }'

or the equivalent

ls | awk '{ i = substr($0, 73, 10) } i < "2016-08-11" '

• i = substr($0, 73, 10) saves the extracted date to variable i
• i < "2016-08-11" if this condition is true, print input line

Since the date is in YYYY-MM-DD format, a simple string comparison will work without need of any conversion

Answer 2

you can try this command

you can give the date input as yyymmdd format in awk command

ls *.txt > all_files.txt
awk -F_ -vin_date="20160427" '{split($2,a,"-");date=a[1]a[2]a[3];if(date+0<in_date)print}' all_files.txt

Answer 3

Combining match and substr in awk giving me the desired result:

ls | awk 'match($0,"\+0000_"){i = substr($0,RSTART+6,10)} i < "2016-08-11" '