In article ,
vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

> How can I change this so the result passed to cat has quotes?
>
> alias catbydate='ls -rt | xargs cat *'
>
> Here's why: some files have spaces in the names and cat complains.

You might instead trying writing a script using
IFS=
(i.e., empty).

Hans Aberg

2007-04-3, 18:00(+00), vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com:
>
> How can I change this so the result passed to cat has quotes?
>
> alias catbydate='ls -rt | xargs cat *'
>
> Here's why: some files have spaces in the names and cat complains.

The "*" above doesn't make sense.

For symlinks, you probably want the time of modification of the
actual file rather than the link:

Try:

catbydate() {
ls -Lrt | sed 's/./\\&/g' | xargs cat --
}

With zsh, you would do:

cat ./*(-.Om)


--
Stéphane

I was wondering if xargs -0 might work?

the way I use this is I get a mail folder from yahoo (comes zipped)
and I want to put it all in one text file.

so
catbydate >> goats2006.txt

I'll try what was suggested.. much obliged

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Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
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2007-04-4, 05:09(+00), vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com:
> I was wondering if xargs -0 might work?
>
> the way I use this is I get a mail folder from yahoo (comes zipped)
> and I want to put it all in one text file.
>
> so
> catbydate >> goats2006.txt
[...]

zsh:

{for f (*(Om)) formail < $f} > mbox

You could do

ls -rt | tr '\n' '\0' |
xargs -r0 -n1 sh -c 'exec formail < "$1"' inline > mbox

If your xargs supports -0 (which is a non-standard option).

You probably need formail to convert the files to mbox format
(add leading "from ..." lines).

--
Stéphane