i have the following in my directory x:

3 files with the word "LIST" inside the files
2 files without the word "LIST"
1 folder (sudirectory)

i want to get the filename of the latest file (timestamp) with the word "LIST".

by the way the script and the list of files are in seperate folders.

i tried using:

ls -t | xargs grep -l "LIST" | head -1

but this only works if the script and file is within the same directory.

that's all folks :P

How about using "find"?

I don't know why exactly u want the newest of these files.
But find has some time-comparisson, maybe that'll help.

Try this:

find . -name "*" -print | xargs grep -l "Kevin" | xargs ls -lt | head -n 1

occasionally, users creates a file containing data using different file (for backtracking purpose). i want the script to automatically detect the latest file. and if that file contains the word LIST then that is the file i am looking for.

you are right oombera... but i have already used:

find . -name -type f -exec grep -l "LIST" {} \; | xargs ls -lt | head -n 1

it works the same. thanks for the inputs.

Command we tried using to grep ERROR from lastest 1 log files from 5 logs files available in that particular directory is:
grep ERROR 'ls -ltr | tail -1'

but this command is not working.. for me its saying.. cannot open DistributeImageFilesToTarget_10_dataLocations_PhillipinesDataLocations.xml.log

if i give ls -lrt for all the files in that diretory

-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 5022 Apr 2 05:13 DistributeDataFilesToTarget_4_dataLocations_ChinaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 1672 Apr 2 05:14 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_14_dataLocations_WHQDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 7480 Apr 2 05:15 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_60_dataLocations_IndonesiaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 2113 Apr 2 05:34 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_8_dataLocations_MalaysiaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 2107 Apr 2 05:39 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_10_dataLocations_PhillipinesDataLocations.xml.log