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.