Question : korn shell scripting ... extract part of the file name ?

Hai !
       This is my question.

i have a file something like my_file_20080810.dat  

now i need to look for the file in a folder and then grab the timestamp.

cd directory_in_which_file_is_present
ls -1 | wc -l   =====> if count =1 then ok and now i need to pull the timestamp.

Answer : korn shell scripting ... extract part of the file name ?

The timestamp in the name of the file? then try cut:

ls -1 *.dat | cut -d'_' -f 3|cut -d'.' -f1