We are trying to write a script "sendemail.sh" to count the number of occurrence of a particular string in a log file "SendEmail.log" within the given interval. We have a log file. In that we are searching for a pattern "ReqInputMsgLog" and need to count the number of times it occurred in the given period for eg: from "2014-08-19 11:30" to "2014-08-19 11:34". And our script look like this: #!/bin/sh enterdate=$1 echo $enterdate enddate=$2 enterdate1=`date +%s -d $enterdate +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"` echo $enterdate1 enddate1=`date +%s -d $enddate +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"` echo $enddate count=0 cat SendEmail.log | grep "ReqInputMsgLog" | awk -F "[" '{print $3}' | awk -F "," '{print $1}' > /con/scripts_server/file.txt for line in `cat /con/scripts_server/file.txt` do logdate=`echo $line | awk -F : '{print $1":"$2}'` if [[ $logdate < $enddate1 ]]; then count=`expr $count + 1` fi done echo $count But when we are trying to execute the script by the below command its not showing the proper count. ./sendemail.sh "2014-08-19 11:30" "2014-08-19 11:34" Log file is very big one. Small chunk has been posted here. INFO [SIBJMSRAThreadPool : 5] [2014-08-19 11:18:24,471] SendEmail - 8/19/14 11:18 AM,ECCF25B0-0147-4000-E000-1B830A3C05A9,ReqInputMsgLog,SendEmail,<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <in:sendEmailRequestMsg xmlns:in="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:ns0="wsdl.http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:ns1="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:me="wsdl.http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xsi:type="me:sendEmailRequestMsg"> <in:sendEmail xmlns:xci0="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface"> INFO [SIBJMSRAThreadPool : 7] [2014-08-19 11:18:14,235] SendEmail - 8/19/14 11:18 AM,ECCEFDB2-0147-4000-E000-1B830A3C05A9,ReqInputMsgLog,SendEmail,<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <in:sendEmailRequestMsg xmlns:in="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:ns0="wsdl.http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:ns1="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:me="wsdl.http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface" xsi:type="me:sendEmailRequestMsg"> <in:sendEmail xmlns:xci0="http://EmailMed/EmailMedInterface"> INFO [SIBJMSRAThreadPool : 7] [2014-08-19 11:18:14,241] SendEmail - xmlText: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> after awk command we will get a file "/con/scripts_server/file.txt" which looks similar like below: 2014-08-19 11:28:03 2014-08-19 11:28:06 2014-08-19 11:28:17 2014-08-19 11:28:53 2014-08-19 11:29:02 2014-08-19 11:29:47 2014-08-19 11:29:57 2014-08-19 11:30:07 2014-08-19 11:30:17 2014-08-19 11:30:19 2014-08-19 11:30:19 2014-08-19 11:30:22 2014-08-19 11:30:25 2014-08-19 11:30:25 2014-08-19 11:30:36 2014-08-19 11:30:51 2014-08-19 11:30:56 2014-08-19 11:30:59 2014-08-19 11:30:59 2014-08-19 11:31:08 2014-08-19 11:31:25 2014-08-19 11:32:19 2014-08-19 11:32:22 2014-08-19 11:32:27 2014-08-19 11:32:28 2014-08-19 11:32:41 2014-08-19 11:32:49 2014-08-19 11:32:59 2014-08-19 11:33:27 2014-08-19 11:33:41 2014-08-19 11:34:07 2014-08-19 11:34:14 2014-08-19 11:34:21 2014-08-19 11:34:25 2014-08-19 11:34:38 2014-08-19 11:34:50 2014-08-19 11:34:58