Alias for viewing logs with todays date

Question

I want to create an alias:

alias readFile='ls file1.todaysdate' where todaysdate is in format 130714.

How would i do this?

Answer 1

you can use the date command to give you the date in that format:

date +%y%m%d

this gives you the YYMMDD format. In the alias file you can drop that date format into your command with the `` back-ticks like so:

alias readFile='ls file1.`date +%y%m%d`'

everything between the back-ticks is executed and the output is placed instead of the back-ticks. so

echo "hello `whoami`"

would say "hello " followed by your username.