How can I make a copy of a file with a new name that contains the timestamp of the original in the filename? - linux

Question

Writing a bash script that will copy a file into a directory where the new copy has the same name, but with the timestamp appended to the filename (prior to the extension).
How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

to insert the time stamp of the file itself into the original file name, as well as preserving that timestamp in the target file, the following works in GNU environments:
file="/some/dir/path-to-file.xxx";
cp -p "$file" "${file%.*}-$(date -r"$file" '+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S').${file##*.}"
Adding proper use of the basename(1) command into the mix would allow you to copy the file into a different directory.
It's more challenging to do this outside of GNU/Linux environments and you have to start visiting languages like awk, perl, python, even php, to replace the date -r command.

Answer 2

file="file_to_copy"
cp $file "/path/to/dest/$file"`stat --printf "%X" $file`
You can look at the manual page of stat (man 1 stat) to choose the appropriate timestamp for your needs (creation, last access etc.)
In this example, I chose %X which means time of last access, seconds since Epoch

Answer 3

Suppose
var="/path/to/filename.ext" #path is optional
Do
var1="${var##*/}
cp "$var" "/path/to/new/directory/${var1%.*}$(date +%s).${var1##*.}"
For more on ${var%.*} & ${var##*.} , see [ shell parameter expansion ].
date manpage says :
%s seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC