OS X terminal command to create a file named on current date

I have set up a cron task and I want to save the output to a file. The file should have the name based on the time at which the cron was executed (eg.: 20110317-113051.txt).

My actual cron command is as follows:

lynx -dump http://somesite/script.php > /Volumes/dev0/textfile.txt

I want the textfile to be replaced by some sort of unique time stamp.

I've tried

lynx -dump http://s开发者_如何学Comesite/script.php > $(date).txt

Thanks for your help!

Sorin

The date command can be given a format to determine exactly what form it generates dates in. It looks as if you want $(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).txt. With this format, the output of date should be free of spaces, parentheses, etc., which might otherwise confuse the shell or the lynx command.

See http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/date.1.html for documentation of the date command and http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man3/strftime.3.html for documentation of the format string, which is the same as for the strftime function in the standard library.

You need to quote the file name, since date by default will have special characters in it:

lynx -dump http://somesite/script.php > "$(date).txt"

As @Gareth says though, you should specify a format string for date, so that you get a more readable/manageable file name, e.g.

lynx -dump http://somesite/script.php > "$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).txt"