Shell backup script help

[randyriegel]

I have not written many shell scripts before. I'm wanting to write a scripts to backup my site to a tar.gz file with date and time in filename.

I can back up my files with the following command:

tar -zcvf backup20040726_1300.tar.gz mydir

I want to create a script automatically puts the current date and time in this command. How can this be done. I'm sure it's probably pretty easy I'm just not experienced at shell scripting.

[randyriegel]

nevermind figured it out using

FILE=~/backups/backup_$(date + %Y%m%d_%k%M).tar.gz
tar -zcvf $FILE mydir