find command: How to find the oldest file in a folder

[Leo The Cat]

Hi Guys

How to find the oldest file in a folder only with a method based on the find command ?

bests regards
Den

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

> [...] based on the find command ?

Why use "find"?

ls -1t | tail -1

[KarloChacon]

this work too

ls -lrt | head -2

[Steven Schweda]

> this work too

Try it with "-1rt" instead of "-lrt".
one ell

Unless you really want more than the name.

[KarloChacon]

but if you really need only files and not directories

since my previous ls -lrt | head -2 list the file or directory that is the oldest or the 2 oldest if you modify head to -3 or -4 and so on


to list the oldest file only

#ls -lrt | grep -v ^d | head -2

[Steven Schweda]

> but if you really need [...]

As usual, what we really need most is a
complete description of the problem to be
solved.

> [...] | head -2

Still shows "total xxxx" along with the
desired information. "| tail -1" could solve
that, but then why use "head" at all?

[KarloChacon]

ok sorry Steven sometimes I'm not perfect


#ls -gt | grep -v ^d | tail -1

[Steven Schweda]

Now extract only the file name. (And does
your method for that work if the file name
contains space characters?)

Everything's complicated.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Den:

Since this is the Linux forum, I'm going to assume that you are using the GNU 'find'. Hence, "only with a method based on the find command" you could do:

# find /path -type f -printf "%T@ %h/%f\n"|sort -k1n,1|awk 'NR==1 {print $NF}'

The name of the oldest file in '/path' will be returned with its full path and name.

Of course, I took the liberty of using 'sort' and 'awk' in a pipeline too :-)

Regards!

...JRF...

[Leo The Cat]

Many possibilities are efficient here.
Thanks guys