Get most recent file in a directory on Linux

Question

Looking for a command that will return the single most recent file in a directory  Not seeing a limit parameter to ls

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This is a recursive version  i e  it finds the most recently updated file in a certain directory or any of its subdirectory   find  DIR -type f -printf   T   p n    sort -n   cut -d    -f 2-   tail -n 1   Edit  use -f 2- instead of -f 2 as suggested by Kevin

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Finding the most current file in every directory according to a pattern  e g  the sub directories of the working directory that have name ending with  tmp   case insensitive    find   -iname   tmp -type d -exec sh -c  ls -lArt      tail -n 1

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A note about reliability   Since the newline character is as valid as any in a file name  any solution that relies on lines like the head tail based ones are flawed   With GNU ls  another option is to use the --quoting-style shell-always option and a bash array   eval  files    ls -t --quoting-style shell-always         files      gt  0    amp  amp  printf   s n     files 0       add the -A option to ls if you also want to consider hidden files    If you want to limit to regular files  disregard directories  fifos  devices  symlinks  sockets      you d need to resort to GNU find   With bash 4 4 or newer  for readarray -d  and GNU coreutils 8 25 or newer  for cut -z    readarray -t -d    files  lt   lt     LC ALL C find   -maxdepth 1 -type f   -name      -printf   T   f 0      sort -rzn   cut -zd  -f2        files      gt  0    amp  amp  printf   s n     files 0      Or recursively   readarray -t -d    files  lt   lt     LC ALL C find   -name   -o -name      -prune -o -type f -printf   T  p 0      sort -rzn   cut -zd  -f2-    Best here would be to use zsh and its glob qualifiers instead of bash to avoid all this hassle   Newest regular file in the current directory   printf   s n     om 1     Including hidden ones   printf   s n    D om 1     Second newest   printf   s n     om 2     Check file age after symlink resolution   printf   s n    - om 1     Recursively   printf   s n        om 1     Also  with the completion system  compinit and co  enabled  Ctrl Xm becomes a completer that expands to the newest file   So   vi Ctrl Xm  Would make you edit the newest file  you also get a chance to see which it before you press Return    vi Alt 2Ctrl Xm  For the second-newest file   vi   cCtrl Xm  for the newest c file   vi     Ctrl Xm  for the newest regular file  not directory  nor fifo device      and so on

User · Answer

try this simple command  ls -ltq   lt path gt     head -n 1   If you want file name - last modified  path    ab cd   log  If you want  directory name  - last modified  path    ab cd

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I needed to do it too  and I found these commands  these work for me   If you want last file by its date of creation in folder access time     ls -Aru   tail -n 1     And if you want last file that has changes in its content  modify time     ls -Art   tail -n 1

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Recursively   find  1 -type f -exec stat --format   Y   y  n            sort -nr   cut -d  -f2-   head

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I like  echo   om 1    zsh syntax  as that just gives the file name and doesn t invoke any other command

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Presuming you don t care about hidden files that start with a    ls -rt   tail -n 1   Otherwise  ls -Art   tail -n 1

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ls -t -1   sed  1q    Will show the last modified item in the folder  Pair with grep to find latest entries with keywords  ls -t -1   grep foo   sed  1q

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ls -lAtr   tail -1  The other solutions do not include files that start with       This command will also include     and       which may or may not be what you want   ls -latr   tail -1

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If you want to get the most recent changed file also including any subdirectories you can do it with this little oneliner   find   -type f -exec stat -c   Y  n          sort -nr   awk -v var  1   NR  1 NR  var  print  0     while read t f  do d   date -d   t    b  d  T  Y    echo   d --  f   done   If you want to do the same not for changed files  but for accessed files you simple have to change the    Y parameter from the stat command to  X  And your command for most recent accessed files looks like this   find   -type f -exec stat -c   X  n          sort -nr   awk -v var  1   NR  1 NR  var  print  0     while read t f  do d   date -d   t    b  d  T  Y    echo   d --  f   done   For both commands you also can change the var  1  parameter if you want to list more than just one file

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With only Bash builtins  closely following BashFAQ 003  shopt -s nullglob  for f in       do        -d  f     amp  amp  continue         f -nt  latest     amp  amp  latest  f done  printf   s n   quot  latest quot

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using R recursive option    you may consider this as enhancement for good answers here    ls -arRtlh   tail -50

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ls -Art   tail -n 1   Not very elegant  but it works

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ls -Frt   grep           tail -n 1

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I use   ls -ABrt1 --group-directories-first   tail -n1  It gives me just the file name  excluding folders

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The find   sort solution works great until the number of files gets really large  like an entire file system    Use awk instead to just keep track of the most recent file   find  DIR -type f -printf   T   p n     awk   BEGIN   recent   0  file          if   1  gt  recent          recent    1     file    0         END   print file       sed  s   0-9     0-9

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ls -t   head -n1   This command actually gives the latest modified file in the current working directory

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Shorted variant based on dmckee s answer   ls -t   head -1

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I personally prefer to use as few not built-in bash commands as I can  to reduce the number of expensive fork and exec syscalls   To sort by date the ls needed to be called  But using of head is not really necessary  I use the following one-liner  works only on systems supporting name pipes    read newest  lt   lt  ls -t   log    or to get the name of the oldest file  read oldest  lt   lt  ls -rt   log     Mind the space between the two   lt   marks    If the hidden files are also needed -A arg could be added   I hope this could help

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All those ls tail solutions work perfectly fine for files in a directory - ignoring subdirectories   In order to include all files in your search  recursively   find can be used  gioele suggested sorting the formatted find output  But be careful with whitespaces  his suggestion doesn t work with whitespaces    This should work with all file names   find  DIR -type f -printf   T   p n    sort -n   sed -r  s   0-9    s       tail -n 1   xargs -I   ls -l        This sorts by mtime  see man find    Ak    File s  last  access  time in the format specified by k  which is either     or a directive for the C  strftime  function   The possible values for k are listed below  some of them might not be available on all systems  due to differences in  strftime  between systems                seconds since Jan  1  1970  00 00 GMT  with fractional part   Ck    File s last status change time in the format specified by k  which is the same as for  A   Tk    File s last modification time in the format specified by k  which is the same as for  A    So just replace  T with  C to sort by ctime

[linux] Get most recent file in a directory on Linux

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