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From: dave@sq.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.text
Subject: Re: How to obtain file date rather than current date
Message-ID: <1986Oct8.182034.4245@sq.uucp>
Date: Wed, 8-Oct-86 18:20:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: sq.1986Oct8.182034.4245
Posted: Wed Oct  8 18:20:34 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Oct-86 05:22:54 EDT
References: <4353@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: dave@sq.UUCP (David Seaman)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto
Lines: 31
Xref: utcs net.unix:9498 net.text:1429
Checksum: 44376

In article <4353@brl-smoke.ARPA> abrams@MITRE.arpa (Marshall D. Abrams) writes:
>I am using troff with the ms macros to produce hardcopy of a file
>which is getting many updates.  When I print it I am using the DA
>directive to get the date printed on the hardcopy.  But this is the
>date printed.  I would much rather have the date that the file
>was last revised.  Any suggestion on how to do this would be
>appreciated.

The following troff macro, gR (GetReviseTime), assigns the latest
revision-date of the file in which it appears to the string whose name
is the argument in a call to gR:

.de gR
.sy echo ".ds \\$1 `ls -l \n(.F | awk '{print $5, $6, $7}'`">/tmp/date\n($$
.so /tmp/date/\n($$
.sy rm /tmp/date\n($$

After the above, in the file which is being formatted by ms, the
following:

.gR dR
\*(dR

would place the respective date in the output. It also works independent
of the ms macros.

Note: the .sy request is available in DWB and ditroff.

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David Seaman	utzoo!sq!dave