Keep latest file and delete all other

Question

In my folder there are many pdf files with date-timestamp format such as shown in the last. I would like to keep the latest file for the day and delete the rest for that day

Answer 1

Using dictionary You can keep one value. This can be dirty and quickest solution, maybe not the best.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import datetime
import stat
import shutil

filelist=[]
lst=[]
dc={}

os.chdir(".")
for files in os.listdir("."):
    if files.endswith(".pdf"):
        lst.append(files)

for x in lst:
    print x[0:10].replace("-","")
    dc[int(x[0:10].replace("-",""))]=x

a = dc.items()
flist=[]
for k, v in a:
    flist.append(v)

dir="tmpdir"    
if not os.path.exists(dir):
    os.makedirs(dir)

from shutil import copyfile
for x in flist:
    print x
    copyfile(x, dir + "/" + x)

#os.chdir(".")
for files in os.listdir("."):
    if files.endswith(".pdf"):
            os.unlink(files)

os.chdir("./tmpdir")
for files in os.listdir("."):
    if files.endswith(".pdf"):
        copyfile(files, "../"+files)

os.chdir("../")
shutil.rmtree(os.path.abspath(".")+"/tmpdir")