Please help me out how to identify the latest file in one directory by looking at file's timestamp or datestamp. You can say using system command. Thanks

cd directory
ls -l -rt | head -1

You would use tail instead of head for the latest file.

Jim, Lazytech:

Thanks very much for your advice. I mean the latest file by timestamp or datestamp. Using head -l or tail -l only list file in the begining or in the end. I don't care the order of the file listing. I want to know how to get or find the latest file based on date or time. Thanks.

Well, if you man ls, you'll see what the switches mean. The -t switch sorts the listing by 'time' so the output is displayed from newest to oldest. The -r switch reverses it so the newest file is at the end of the listing instead of the beginning. And -l gives you the long listing.

$ ls -lrt
total 178880
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche      2727 13 Jul  2005 badlist
-rwxr-xr-x  1 carlsche  carlsche      1076 13 Jul  2005 scanlist
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche   1428173 22 May 21:25 dirlist.album
-rwxr-xr-x  1 carlsche  carlsche       429 22 May 21:26 dirout
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche   1404661 22 May 21:32 dirlist.song
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche   1404035 22 May 21:33 dirlist.artist
drwxr-xr-x  6 carlsche  carlsche       204 24 Sep 22:18 Previous iTunes Libraries
drwxr-xr-x  3 carlsche  carlsche       102 24 Sep 22:19 Album Artwork
drwxr-xr-x  9 carlsche  carlsche       306 24 Sep 22:40 iTunes Music
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche  42887486 29 Oct 18:32 iTunes Library
-rw-r--r--  1 carlsche  carlsche  44442517 29 Oct 18:32 iTunes Music Library.xml

Carl:

Thanks for your explanation. It is clear. Question is: if I want to find the latest file (if reversed, it will be last file) to re-name and move to another directory on Linux. What kind of code should I write? Since using ls -lrt |tail -l, it will show a list of the latest file, not the last file. May I write code like this:

ls -lrt |tail -l |mv /directory1/file1 /directory2/file2

Please advise. Thank you so much.

Try below
> mv `find ./ -maxdepth 1 -atime 10 | tail -1` new_file_name

But this will work for files only in current directory and only if there are files that are accessed in last 10 days(you can change the velue)
[I am a newbie . excuse me if there is anything wrong]

Any way [ $ mv `ls -t | head -1` /temp/newfile_name ] by BOFH is straight forward