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 like echo *(om[1]) (zsh syntax) as that just gives the file name and doesn't invoke any other command.

Answer 2

The find / sort solution works great until the number of files gets really large (like an entire file system). Use awk instead to just keep track of the most recent file:

find $DIR -type f -printf "%T@ %p\n" | 
awk '
BEGIN { recent = 0; file = "" }
{
if ($1 > recent)
   {
   recent = $1;
   file = $0;
   }
}
END { print file; }' |
sed 's/^[0-9]*\.[0-9]* //'

Answer 3

Shorted variant based on dmckee's answer:

ls -t | head -1