Displaying the last N modified files?

Question

How can I list the 10 most recently modified files of a certain extension, not all files, or the files modified during the last 2 days for example?

Dennis Kaarsemaker · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 10:58:33Z

up vote 1 down vote accepted

You can use find for this. Let's say we want all .py files in the current directory modified in the last 2 days:

find -maxdepth 1 -name '*.py' -mtime -2

answered Dec 2 '12 at 10:58

Dennis Kaarsemaker
3,7831821

Stephane Chazelas · Answer 2 · 2012-12-02 22:04:29Z

up vote 1 down vote

With zsh

ls -ld -- *.ext(om[1,10])

for the last two days:

ls -ld -- *.ext(m-2)

Otherwise, if filenames don't contain newline characters, you can always do:

ls -lrtd -- *.ext | tail -n 10

And for files modified in the last two days POSIXly:

find . ! -name . -prune -name '*.ext' -mtime -2 -exec ls -ld {} +

edited Dec 2 '12 at 22:04

answered Dec 2 '12 at 11:01

Stephane Chazelas
29.3k32164

	I am using bash. How can I alter the last command for a specific number of days or files ? – Tarek Dec 2 '12 at 11:14
	There is no easy way to do this with plain `ls` in bash afaik. – Bernhard Dec 2 '12 at 11:20

2 Answers