mjhjmtu

how to find most recent files in a directory? my script is giving some extra outputs with most recent file in the directory.

#!/bin/bash
echo "Please type in the directory you want all the files to be listed"
read directory
for entry in "$directory"/*
do
 (stat -c %y "$directory"/* | tail -n 1)
done
 for D in "$entry"
 do
 (ls -ltr "$D" | tail -n 1)
done

current output :

2018-02-19 12:24:19.842748830 -0500
2018-02-19 12:24:19.842748830 -0500
2018-02-19 12:24:19.842748830 -0500
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 19 12:19 test3.xml

my directory structure is as below

$ pwd
/nfs/test_library/myfolder/test

$ ls -ltr test
1.0 2.0 3.0

$ ls -ltr 1.0
test1.xml
$ ls -ltr 2.0
test2.xml
$ ls -ltr 3.0
test3.xml(which is the most recent file)

so I have to get the script working for printing only test3.xml

I was able to accomplish what I believe you want with the following:

GNU stat

read -rp "Please type in the directory you want all the files to be listed" directory
if [ -d "$directory" ]; then
 find "$directory" -type f -exec stat --printf='%Yt%nn' ; | sort -n -k1,1 | tail -1
else
 echo "Error, please only specify a directory"
fi

BSD stat

read -rp "Please type in the directory you want all the files to be listed" directory
if [ -d "$directory" ]; then
 find "$directory" -type f -exec stat -F -t '%s' ; | sort -n -k6,6 | tail -1
else
 echo "Error, please only specify a directory"
fi

This will find all files in the specified directory recursively. Then it will stat them with their modify timestamp in a UNIX EPOCH timestamp format. Then it sorts them based on this timestamp field. Finally it prints only the last result (most recently updated file).