How to copy the top 10 most recent files from one directory to another?

Question

Al my html files reside here :

/home/thinkcode/myfiles/html/

I want to move the newest 10 files to /home/thinkcode/Test

I

Answer 1

ls -lt *.html | head -10 | awk '{print $NF}' | xargs -i cp {} DestDir

In the above example DestDir is the destination directory for the copy.

Add -t after xargs to see the commands as they execute. I.e., xargs -i -t cp {} DestDir.

For more information check out the xargs command.

EDIT: As pointed out by @DennisWilliamson (and also checking the current man page) re the -i option This option is deprecated; use -I instead..

Also, both solutions presented depend on the filenames in questions don't contain any blanks or tabs.