John,
That is interesting, but again this is not my goal.
Let me be far more detailed then I wanted.
while doing research for a story, I read a supportive article on the yahoo
news site.
As I was in Lynx at the time I chose it option to save a file, created a
name, and saved it.
I do this a great deal, certainly when researching a feature. Have no
desire to combine files.
Instead, which is why I started with ls, I want to confirm the name I gave
this file, so I can download it from this shell workspace to my desktop,
and use it on my computer.
The only way my access tools plays a role, is that I imply want a quick
list of files, saved to my shell workspace, ending in .txt, within a
time window.
I am unsure how creating a temporary file or saving files into other things
matches my goals here.
Normally ls -l *whatever.txt would work, but I likely used such a unique
name that that solution is failing..leading me to the date idea instead.
Find seems like an option, but I have likely lost the best simple syntax
for the job.
Kare
On Sat, 16 May 2026, Dan Ritter wrote:
Karen Lewellen wrote:
My goal is clear text, that my screen reader can manage, when I use its own
review mode.
Does that make more sense?
My goals are very tight, as I want to locate a file I saved within this
small window, with screen output that my talking computer manages.
This makes sense. We are handicapped by not having experience
with your precise tools, so we are trying to explain all the
tools that might do what you require.
I have found in many situations that I want to store files in a
directory tree rather than a single directory:
/home/files/2026/05/12/acorn.txt
/home/files/2026/05/12/mighty-oak.txt
and if I then want to compile a file which is the sum of every
note about project mighty-oak, I use
cat 2026/*/*/mighty-oak.txt >> current-mighty-oak.txt
The >> symbols cause the various files to all be added to the
receiving file, rather than each one replacing it.
I would use a simple shell script to create today's directory if
it does not already exist:
#!/bin/sh
$TODAY=`date +%Y/%m/%d`
mkdir -p /home/files/$TODAY
On the other hand, if you routinely put dates inside your text
files, you could use
grep -rl 20250417 *txt
Will look for the date 20250417 in every file in the current
directory tree with a txt extension, and print their names.
I hope these ideas help.
