I need to direct output of one command as a argument of next command,
but don't know how to do it on command line

for example
ls -rt | grep sv | tail -1 ---> will give me last modified file. I
like to cat on this file.

ls -rl | grep sv | tail -1 | cat --> will not do what I am trying to
do.

On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 06:19:13 -0700
somebody claiming to be JoshforRefugee wrote:
> I need to direct output of one command as a argument of next command,
> but don't know how to do it on command line
>
> for example
> ls -rt | grep sv | tail -1 ---> will give me last modified file. I
> like to cat on this file.
>
> ls -rl | grep sv | tail -1 | cat --> will not do what I am trying to
> do.

cat `ls -rl | grep sv | tail -1`

Kind regards,

Jeroen.

--
ir. Jeroen van Nieuwenhuizen
Email: jnieuwen [at] jeroen [dot] se
I know I'm not perfect but I can smile

On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 06:19:13 -0700
somebody claiming to be JoshforRefugee wrote:
> I need to direct output of one command as a argument of next command,
> but don't know how to do it on command line
>
> for example
> ls -rt | grep sv | tail -1 ---> will give me last modified file. I
> like to cat on this file.
>
> ls -rl | grep sv | tail -1 | cat --> will not do what I am trying to
> do.

cat `ls -rl | grep sv | tail -1`

Kind regards,

Jeroen.

--
ir. Jeroen van Nieuwenhuizen
Email: jnieuwen [at] jeroen [dot] se
I know I'm not perfect but I can smile

On Sep 3, 10:19 pm, JoshforRefugee <anki...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I need to direct output of one command as a argument of next command,
> but don't know how to do it on command line

Try using xargs but be careful about spaces in the output of command
1.

> for example
> ls -rt | grep sv | tail -1 ---> will give me last modified file. I
> like to cat on this file.

Provided your file names don't have any space within,
ls -rt | grep sv | tail -1 | xargs cat

Thanks Jeroen and Arch119.
One more general question.

How can I eliminate additional spaces or is there search and replace I
can do on xargs.

ls -rt | grep old | tail -1 | s/old/new/ | xargs touch.

So in this case, I am grabbing oldest file with *old* name, and
creating new file (with replacing old from discovered file name with
new)