Get Last Modified File in a Directory

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

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.

How can I list (ls) the 5 last modified files in a directory?

Try using head or tail. If you want the 5 most-recently modified files:

ls -1t | head -5

The -1 (that's a one) says one file per line and the head says take the first 5 entries.

If you want the last 5 try

ls -1t | tail -5

How to get last modified file in a directory?

You can do basically this:

• get the list of files
• get the time for each of them (also check os.path.getmtime() for updates)
• use datetime module to get a value to compare against (that 1h)
• compare

For that I've used a dictionary to both store paths and timestamps in a compact format. Then you can sort the dictionary by its values (dict.values()) (which is a float, timestamp) and by that you will get the latest files created within 1 hour that are sorted. (e.g. by sorted(...) function):

import os
import glob
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

hour_files = {
    key: val for key, val in {
        path: os.path.getctime(path)
        for path in glob.glob("./*")
    }.items()
    if datetime.fromtimestamp(val) >= datetime.now() - timedelta(hours=1)
}

Alternatively, without the comprehension:

files = glob.glob("./*")
times = {}
for path in files:
    times[path] = os.path.getctime(path)

hour_files = {}
for key, val in times.items():
    if datetime.fromtimestamp(val) < datetime.now() - timedelta(hours=1):
        continue
    hour_files[key] = val

Or, perhaps your folder is just a mess and you have too many files. In that case, approach it incrementally:

hour_files = {}
for file in glob.glob("./*"):
    timestamp = os.path.getctime(file)
    if datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp) < datetime.now() - timedelta(hours=1):
        continue
    hour_files[file] = timestamp

Get most recent file in a directory on Linux

ls -Art | tail -n 1

This will return the latest modified file or directory. Not very elegant, but it works.

Used flags:

-A list all files except . and ..

-r reverse order while sorting

-t sort by time, newest first

How do I find the last modified file in a directory in Java?

private File getLatestFilefromDir(String dirPath){
    File dir = new File(dirPath);
    File[] files = dir.listFiles();
    if (files == null || files.length == 0) {
        return null;
    }

    File lastModifiedFile = files[0];
    for (int i = 1; i < files.length; i++) {
       if (lastModifiedFile.lastModified() < files[i].lastModified()) {
           lastModifiedFile = files[i];
       }
    }
    return lastModifiedFile;
}

How do I pull the 'last modified time' of each file within a directory in Python?

The os.listdir() method lists the files of the given path excluding the path, hence you will need to concatenate the path yourself:

for file in os.listdir('../File Transfer/Old Files/'):
    if file.endswith('.txt'):
        time_mod = os.path.getmtime('../File Transfer/Old Files/' + file)
        print(time_mod)

The glob.glob() method works great in cases like this:

import os
import glob

for file in glob.globr('../File Transfer/Old Files/*.txt'):
    time_mod = os.path.getmtime('../File Transfer/Old Files/' + file)
    print(time_mod)

You can get the amount of hours passed since the last modification of each file like so:

import os
from time import time

PATH = '../File Transfer/Old Files/'

for file in os.listdir(PATH):
    if file.endswith('.txt'):
        time_mod = time() - os.path.getmtime(PATH + file)
        print(time_mod // 3600)

How to get the latest file in a folder?

Whatever is assigned to the files variable is incorrect. Use the following code.

import glob
import os

list_of_files = glob.glob('/path/to/folder/*') # * means all if need specific format then *.csv
latest_file = max(list_of_files, key=os.path.getctime)
print(latest_file)

Getting last modified for every file in a directory

The path argument to os.stat must be a string but you are passing in an instance of Path. You need to convert Path to string using str.

for file in asm_pths:
    (mode, ino, dev, nlink, uid, gid, size, atime, mtime, ctime) = os.stat(str(file))
    print("last modified: %s" % time.ctime(mtime))

But if you only want last modification date then os.path.getmtime will be fine:

for file in asm_pths:
    print("last modified: %s" % time.ctime(os.path.getmtime(str(file)))

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