How do you delete a file in a server after doing a wget of all the files?
I understand the delete command works, when you are have done a ftp into the server, but I am unable to use the command while running a shell script. Below is my script, kindly let me know what is wrong in it.
#!/bin/bash
filelist='ls *20120330*'
for file in $filelist
do
ftp -vn <$hostname> <<EOFD
quote USER <username>
quote PASS <Pass>
binary
ls -lrt *20120330*
delete $filelist
quit
EOFD
done
You want
for file in *20120330*
rather than a loop over the literal words ls and *20120330*. If your real use case is much, much more complex, there could be a reason you want the file list in a variable, but my guess is that you don't, and never will.
(What you were probably thinking was
for file in `ls *20120330*`
but that is also wrong, for different but related reasons. See also http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html#ls)
Tangentially, you are probably better off creating a script which deletes all the file names, rather than creating a new ftp session for each file you want to remove;
#!/bin/bash
dellist=
nl='
' # yeah, nl is a newline in single quotes
for file in *20120330*
do
dellist="delete $file$nl"
done
ftp -vn <$hostname> <<EOFD
quote USER <username>
quote PASS <Pass>
binary
ls -lrt \*20120330\*
$dellist
quit
EOFD
Try using rm instead of delete
If it's an option, I'd recommend using ncftpget instead of regular ftp, as it has features that make it friendlier to scripting like this.
ftp command
prompt
mdel *20120330*
#!/bin/bash
username=luser
password=secret
hostname=localhost
filelist=`ls *20120330*`
for f in $filelist; do
ftp -vn ${hostname} <<EOFD
USER ${username}
PASS ${password}
binary
ls -l ${f}
delete ${f}
quit
EOFD
done
