Get most recent file in a directory on Linux

Question

Looking for a command that will return the single most recent file in a directory.

Not seeing a limit parameter to ls...

Answer 1

I personally prefer to use as few not built-in bash commands as I can (to reduce the number of expensive fork and exec syscalls). To sort by date the ls needed to be called. But using of head is not really necessary. I use the following one-liner (works only on systems supporting name pipes):

read newest < <(ls -t *.log)

or to get the name of the oldest file

read oldest < <(ls -rt *.log)

(Mind the space between the two '<' marks!)

If the hidden files are also needed -A arg could be added.

I hope this could help.

Answer 2

Finding the most current file in every directory according to a pattern, e.g. the sub directories of the working directory that have name ending with "tmp" (case insensitive):

find . -iname \*tmp -type d -exec sh -c "ls -lArt {} | tail -n 1" \;

Answer 3

ls -Art | tail -n 1

Not very elegant, but it works.

Answer 4

I use:

ls -ABrt1 --group-directories-first | tail -n1

It gives me just the file name, excluding folders.

Answer 5

try this simple command

ls -ltq  <path>  | head -n 1

If you want file name - last modified, path = /ab/cd/*.log

If you want directory name - last modified, path = /ab/cd/*/

Answer 6

ls -Frt | grep "[^/]$" | tail -n 1