Last modified file in 2 or more directories

m69w · #1 (**permalink**) 07-15-2008

Hi,

Is there any simple way to get the last modified file in a set of 2 or more directories? This should return one file only (not 1 file per directory)

Thanks for your help

Annihilannic · #2 (**permalink**) 07-15-2008

Code:

ls -drt /dir1/* /dir2/* | tail -1

m69w · #3 (**permalink**) 07-16-2008

Thanks Annihilanic. Would you know how to circumvent the ls: Arg list too long problem ?

Annihilannic · #4 (**permalink**) 07-16-2008

I'm presuming there are no subdirectories. It becomes difficult with large numbers of files because you need to use multiple ls commands, therefore you can no longer use its built-in sort-by-time capability. Instead you have to it yourself. This is a little easier if you can be sure that you are only interested in files that were modified in the last 12 months, so you can ignore files whose dates contain a year, e.g.

Code:

find dir1 dir2 -type f | xargs ls -l | awk '$8 ~ /:/' | sort -k 6,6M -k 7,7n | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF}'

Also hopefully your version of sort supports the M sort key (i.e. months), otherwise you have to fiddle some more.

m69w · #5 (**permalink**) 07-16-2008

This is good enough for me, at leat it works with my setup. Thanks again

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