UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
Does anyone know of a Unix command that would give me the most recent file from a list of files with the same names except for the date/time stamp, i.e. kah_en_20070103T2234307Z.zip (with an actual date/time stamp of 1/3/07 4:41 pm), kah_en_20070104T054732Z.zip (with an actual date/time stamp of 1/3/07 11:52 pm), kah_en_20070104T222544Z.zip (with an actual date/time stamp of 1/4/07 4:29 am)?

ls -ltr kah_en* | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF}'

if -tr works without l you can remove the final awk part

just works if the timestamp in the name is the timestamp of the file

Thank you SO MUCH! You have saved me so much time. The command works without the -ltr and ran fine without the final awk command. When I ran the full command, I didn't get any output...not sure why. Again, thanks

no problem, the full command with awk works fine on my systems. don't know why you get no output

Thanks. The awk command did work...had a typo in mine. Another related question. This works fine unless no file exists, then I get this message: KAH_EN*T*Z.zip not found. Do you know of a way I can check to see if the file exists before processing it?

For example, I'm trying to find a way to test to see if a file exists without getting the "not found" message. Can that message be suppressed somehow?

ls kah_en* 2>/dev/null | tail -1

writes the error msg to the special file /dev/null instead of printing it on the terminal
you can also write 2>/some/file and check the file later

perhaps there is a way to check return codes within a pipe, dunno