How to recursively find the latest modified file in a directory?

by 
find . -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' \
| sort -n | tail -1 | cut -f2- -d" "

For a huge tree, it might be hard for sort to keep everything in memory.

%T@ gives you the modification time like a unix timestamp, sort -n sorts numerically, tail -1 takes the last line (highest timestamp), cut -f2 -d" " cuts away the first field (the timestamp) from the output.

Edit: Just as -printf is probably GNU-only, ajreals usage of stat -c is too. Although it is possible to do the same on BSD, the options for formatting is different (-f "%m %N" it would seem)

And I missed the part of plural; if you want more then the latest file, just bump up the tail argument.

More Related Contents:

  1. How to loop through file names returned by find?
  2. Fast way of finding lines in one file that are not in another?
  3. How to use ‘find’ to search for files created on a specific date? [closed]
  4. How can I exclude all “permission denied” messages from “find”?
  5. Recursively rename files using find and sed
  6. Error when using ‘sed’ with ‘find’ command on OS X: “invalid command code .”
  7. Delete files older than 10 days using shell script in Unix [duplicate]
  8. Unexpected operator error [duplicate]
  9. Find and replace filename recursively in a directory
  10. find: missing argument to -exec
  11. find files older than X days in bash and delete
  12. How can I get a recursive full-path listing, one line per file?
  13. How to go to each directory and execute a command?
  14. find -exec with multiple commands
  15. What is the best way to count “find” results?
  16. Looping through find output in Bash where file name contains white spaces
  17. Use GNU find to show only the leaf directories
  18. How to detect if a script is being sourced
  19. How can I use Bash syntax in Makefile targets?
  20. How do I pass in the asterisk character ‘*’ in bash as arguments to my C program?
  21. Remove Unicode characters from textfiles – sed , other Bash/shell methods
  22. How to replace an entire line in a text file by line number
  23. Simulating ENTER keypress in bash script
  24. “find: paths must precede expression:” How do I specify a recursive search that also finds files in the current directory?
  25. Using case for a range of numbers in Bash
  26. How to run some command before or after every Bash command entered from console?
  27. How can I print each command before executing? [duplicate]
  28. Using Bash to display a progress indicator (spinner) [duplicate]
  29. Can parameter expansion be nested in Bash? [duplicate]
  30. Subtract two variables in Bash

Leave a Comment