Copying the newest file in a directory to another location

Transition · 01-14-2005, 11:14 AM

Hi all,

I'm trying to get a script to look at a directory and copy the newest file in that directory to another location. I only want the script to copy the newest file and nothing else. I'm googling like crazy but haven't come up on any leads.

Any help?

druuna · 01-14-2005, 11:26 AM

Hi,

This works:

cp `ls -latr | grep '^-' | tail -1 | awk '{ print $NF }'` /tmp

It also takes in account the existence of none-file entries (dirs, links etc), they are ignored. 'dot' files are not ignored.

If there are only regular files present in a directory, it's simpeler:

cp `ls -1tr | tail -1` /tmp

Hope this helps.

Transition · 01-14-2005, 11:53 AM

It's so beautiful! Thank you!