Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Show the single most recently modified file in a directory

Terminal - Show the single most recently modified file in a directory
ls -lFart |tail -n1
2011-10-17 19:49:14
User: jambino
Functions: ls tail
-2
Up
Down
Show the single most recently modified file in a directory

List all files in a directory in reverse order by modified timestamp. When piped through tail the user will see the most recent file name.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
ls -ltp | sed '1 d' | head -n1
2011-10-17 16:21:15
User: linuxrawkstar
Functions: head ls sed
-2
Up
Down
Show the single most recently modified item in a directory

wrap it in a function if you like...

lastfile () { ls -ltp | sed '1 d' | head -n1 }
Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
lastfile () { find ${1:-.} -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf "%T+ %p\n" | sort -n | tail -n1 | sed 's/[^[:space:]]\+ //'; }
2011-10-17 16:08:02
User: bartonski
Functions: find sed sort tail
-4
Up
Down
Show the single most recently modified file in a directory

Takes a directory name as an argument (defaults to current directory if no arguments are given). Prints the newest file in the directory.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

no, in your version they will see the most recently modified inode. your command doesn't filter out directory names. the point of the command is to show the most recently modified file, and if a subdirectory happens to have been modified more recently, the most recently modified file will not be shown. The most recently modified subdirectory will be shown instead.

Comment by linuxrawkstar 87 weeks and 2 days ago

I edited the command to add file descriptors and a long output format. Now you should be able to tell if its a subdirectory, simlink, or regular file, executable, etc.

Comment by jambino 87 weeks and 1 day ago

Your point of view

You must be signed in to comment.

Related sites and podcasts