UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi Folks,
I have one query that there is a folder in which daily several logs files are getting created , I reached to that location through putty but what I observer that 10 files of different date are been created with same name , what I need to see is the latest file ...let say the location is

cd /var/logs

at this location I see ten different files of different date with same name say abc.log , I want to see the abc.log file of the latest date before opening it in Vi , please advise me the command that will filter out the latest abc.log file of latest date, so That I can open the latest file through Vi editor

You can't have ten files with the same name in a directory. Is the date embedded in the filename? If so, best is in the format YYYYMMDDHHmm, then the files will display already sorted.

Code:

vi $(tail -1 <(ls))

Otherwise

Code:

vi $(head -1 <(ls -t))

Yeah scott , files are created with date is also embedded with them let say,
so please advise I want to open the latest one through Vi editor abc20120517abc.log file

Code:

vi $(tail -1 <(ls abc*.log))

Or if <(..) doesn't work

Code:

vi $(ls abc*.log | tail -1)

Otherwise

Code:

set -- abc*.log
vi $(eval echo \${$#})

you will get the latest file name : ls -lrt | tail -1then vi it.

Code:

vi $(ls -t abc*.log | head -1)