find newest file

Dj_Jestar · 1 Aug 2008 at 15:10

I've got a restore script for restoring the latest .tar.gz of some directories, but the script we're using parses output from

Code:

ls -1t

and takes the first line. Just wondered if there was a straight up command for finding newest file.

Ta.

Una · 1 Aug 2008 at 15:46

Not that I know of:

Code:

ls -lt /path/to/dir/ | head -2 | tail -1 | awk '{print $8}'

will do it quite simply though.

Dj_Jestar · 1 Aug 2008 at 16:58

We're already using:

Code:

ls -1t /path/ | head -1

which works better

Was just wondering if there was a "hidden" ls option or something.

Una · 1 Aug 2008 at 17:31

Dj_Jestar said:
We're already using:

Code:

ls -1t /path/ | head -1

which works better Was just wondering if there was a "hidden" ls option or something.

That shouldn't work at all - it will just give the total in that directory unless your ls binary is different..

Not that I know of. If your a c programmer look at stat() ( http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/functions/stat.html ) You could prolly write a custom program to do it easily and quicker than ls if performance is an issue.