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

Question

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

Answer 1

Let's assume that the variable thePath contains the directory we want to search, the following snippet returns the last modified file inside it:

Files.walk(thePath)
.sorted((f1, f2) -> -(int)(f1.toFile().lastModified() - f2.toFile().lastModified()))
.skip(1)
.findFirst()

What it does is:

• first sort the files by their last modification time in reverse,
• then skip the directory itself,
• and finally take the first element in the stream (which is the last modified one).