Get most recent file in a directory on Linux

linux shell command-line

ls -Art | tail -n 1

Not very elegant, but it works.

Used flags:

-A list all files except . and ..

-r reverse order while sorting

-t sort by time, newest first

linux shell command-line

ls -t | head -n1

This command actually gives the latest modified file in the current working directory.

linux shell command-line

This is a recursive version (i.e. it finds the most recently updated file in a certain directory or any of its subdirectory)

find $DIR -type f -printf "%T@ %p\n" | sort -n | cut -d' ' -f 2- | tail -n 1

Edit: use -f 2- instead of -f 2 as suggested by Kevin

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