in linux terminal how do I show the folder s last modification date taking its content into consideration

Question

So here s the deal  Let s say I have a directory named  web   so    ls -la  drwx------  4 rimmer rimmer 4096 2010-11-18 06 02 web   BUT inside this directory  web php     ls -la  -rw-r--r-- 1 rimmer rimmer 1957 2011-01-05 08 44 index php   That means that even though the content of my directory   web php index php has been last modified at 2011-01-05  the  web  directory itself is reported as last modified at 2010-11-18   What I need to do is have my  web  directory s last modification date reported as the latest modification date of any file directory inside this directory  recursively   How do I go about doing this

User · Answer

If you have a version of find  such as GNU find  that supports -printf then there s no need to call stat repeatedly   find  some dir -printf   T  n    sort -nr   head -n 1   or  find  some dir -printf   TY- Tm- Td  TT n    sort -nr   head -n 1   If you don t need recursion  though   stat --printf   y n

User · Answer

It seems to me that simply  ls -lt mydirectory does the job

User · Answer

If I could  I would vote for the answer by Paulo  I tested it and understood the concept  I can confirm it works  The find command can output many parameters  For example  add the following to the --printf clause    a for attributes in the octal format  n for the file name including a complete path   Example   find Desktop  -exec stat     --printf   y  n n       sort -n -r   head -1 2011-02-14 22 57 39 000000000  0100 Desktop new file   Let me raise this question as well  Does the author of this question want to solve his problem using Bash or PHP  That should be specified

User · Answer

Something like   find  path  -type f -exec stat     --printf   y n             sort -n -r         head -n 1   Explanation    the find command will print modification time for every file recursively ignoring directories  according to the comment by IQAndreas you can t rely on the folders timestamps  sort -n  numerically  -r  reverse  head -n 1  get the first entry

[linux] in linux terminal, how do I show the folder's last modification date, taking its content into consideration?

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