ksh storing result of a command to a variable

Question

I want to store the result of a command to a variable in my shell script. I cant seem to get it to work. I want the most recently dated file in the directory.

Answer 1

I would do something like:

Your version corrected:

PRODUCT=$(ls -t /some/dir/file* | head -1 | xargs -n1 basename)

Or simpler:

PRODUCT=$(cd /some/dir && ls -1t file* | head -1)

• change to the directory
• list one filename per line and sort by time/date
• grab the first line