how to find the five newest modified files in /etc?

[thebeatlesguru]

can i use ls to do it?

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi,

How about the first ten:

# cd /etc
# find . -type f -print | xargs ls -lt | head

[thebeatlesguru]

can u explain it ?thank u

[S.K. Chan]

# find . -type f -print | xargs ls -lt | head

means ..
- find only files from the current directory and print the path, pass it on to 'ls -lt' command which will display these files sorted by the "newest modified" and pipe it to 'head' command to only display 10 lines (ie 10 files).
By default 'head' will display 10 lines.

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

. = from this directory tree and below
type f = normal file only
xargs = is a buffering program that relies on
the input from the output before the pipe (|)
ls -lt = display newest files
head = displays 10 lines by default.

For more info have a look at the man pages for
find
xargs
ls
head

[Deepak Extross]

And if you want FIVE newest files, replace "head" with "head -5".

[Darrell Allen]

If you only want to check the /etc directory (and not it's sub-directories) use:

ll -rt /etc | tail -5

-rt says to reverse the order of sort based on timestamp

You could also do ll -t /etc | head -6

-6 because the first line is the number of directory entries

Darrell