How to get the latest file in a folder

Question

I need to get the latest file of a folder using python  While using the code   max files  key   os path getctime    I am getting the below error     FileNotFoundError   WinError 2  The system cannot find the file specified   a

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I ve been using this in Python 3  including pattern matching on the filename  from pathlib import Path  def latest file path  Path  pattern  str    quot   quot        files   path glob pattern      return max files  key lambda x  x stat   st ctime

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I lack the reputation to comment but ctime from Marlon Abeykoons response did not give the correct result for me  Using mtime does the trick though   key os path getmtime    import glob import os  list of files   glob glob   path to folder         means all if need specific format then   csv latest file   max list of files  key os path getmtime  print latest file    I found two answers for that problem   python os path getctime max does not return latest Difference between python - getmtime   and getctime   in unix system

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I have tried to use the above suggestions and my program crashed  than I figured out the file I m trying to identify was used and when trying to use  os path getctime  it crashed  what finally worked for me was       files before   glob glob os path join my path             code where new file is created       new file   set files before  symmetric difference set glob glob os path join my path           this codes gets the uncommon object between the two sets of file lists its not the most elegant  and if multiple files are created at the same time it would probably won t be stable

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max files  key   os path getctime    is quite incomplete code  What is files  It probably is a list of file names  coming out of os listdir     But this list lists only the filename parts  a  k  a   basenames    because their path is common  In order to use it correctly  you have to combine it with the path leading to it  and used to obtain it    Such as  untested    def newest path       files   os listdir path      paths    os path join path  basename  for basename in files      return max paths  key os path getctime

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Whatever is assigned to the files variable is incorrect  Use the following code  import glob import os  list of files   glob glob   path to folder         means all if need specific format then   csv latest file   max list of files  key os path getctime  print latest file

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I would suggest using glob iglob   instead of the glob glob    as it is more efficient      glob iglob   Return an iterator which yields the same values as glob   without actually storing them all simultaneously    Which means glob iglob   will be more efficient   I mostly use below code to find the latest file matching to my pattern   LatestFile   max glob iglob fileNamePattern  key os path getctime     NOTE  There are variants of max function  In case of finding the latest file we will be using below variant  max iterable      key  default    which needs iterable so your first parameter should be iterable  In case of finding max of nums we can use beow variant   max  num1  num2  num3   args   key

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Try to sort items by creation time  Example below sorts files in a folder and gets first element which is latest   import glob import os  files path   os path join folder       files   sorted      glob iglob files path   key os path getctime  reverse True   print files 0

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A much faster method on windows  0 05s   call a bat script that does this   get latest bat   echo off for  f   i in   dir   directory in question  b a-d od t c   do set LAST   i  LAST    where   directory in question is the directory you want to investigate   get latest py  from subprocess import Popen  PIPE p   Popen  get latest bat   shell True  stdout PIPE   stdout  stderr   p communicate   print stdout  stderr    if it finds a file stdout is the path and stderr is None   Use stdout decode  utf-8   rstrip   to get the usable string representation of the file name

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Edited to improve answer   First define a function get latest file  def get latest file path   paths       fullpath   os path join path  paths          get latest file  example    files   randomtext011   txt     You may also use a docstring    def get latest file path   paths          Returns the name of the latest  most recent  file      of the joined path s         fullpath   os path join path   paths    If you use Python 3  you can use iglob instead   Complete code to return the name of latest file   def get latest file path   paths          Returns the name of the latest  most recent  file      of the joined path s         fullpath   os path join path   paths      files   glob glob fullpath     You may use iglob in Python3     if not files                   I prefer using the negation         return None                        because it behaves like a shortcut     latest file   max files  key os path getctime         filename   os path split latest file      return filename

[python] How to get the latest file in a folder?

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