Re: Finding Oldest File in a Directory

If you're on *nix, you don't need that. Just use:

ls -t | head -1
[download]

in the shell/at the command line. (That is a "dash one", not a "dash lowercase ell" on the head command, BTW.)

--
tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
- Chick McGee

Comment on Re: Finding Oldest File in a Directory Download Code

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Re^2: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Moron (Curate) on Oct 06, 2005 at 09:21 UTC
almost... `ls -t BOT \| head -1` [download] or converted to a one liner in perl... `perl -e 'my %bot; for ( sort { ( $bot{ $a } \|\|= ( -M $a ) ) <=> ( $bot +{ $b } \|\|= ( -M $b ) ) } glob "\BOT\" ) { print "$_\n"; last; }'` [download] -M Free your mind	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Perl Mouse (Chaplain) on Oct 06, 2005 at 09:30 UTC
almost... `ls -td BOT \| head -1` [download] Or you'll get the first file in the oldest directory containing BOT in its name (assuming no file whose name contains BOT is older) This still has the possibility of returning a directory name though. Under Unix, this still is a file, although when people say "file", they usually want to exclude directories. `Perl --((8:>*`	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Moron (Curate) on Oct 06, 2005 at 09:47 UTC
No, the -d option specifically limits the output to directories only, not its absence as you imply. -M Free your mind	[reply]
Re^5: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Perl Mouse (Chaplain) on Oct 06, 2005 at 09:52 UTC
Re^6: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Moron (Curate) on Oct 06, 2005 at 10:12 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^2: Finding Oldest File in a Directory by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Oct 08, 2005 at 19:30 UTC
Except you need `tail`, because `ls -t` lists the files from newest to oldest. And beware of filenames with embedded newlines, they will get cut in half by the `tail` and you might end up manipulating a file other than the one you wanted. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]