Hi,

I seem to have a small problem, which I can't seem to solve in an easy way. What I would like to do is this:

In my script I want to know if a certain file is on the computer. I can find the file by: variable=`find ~ -name MyFile -follow >> MyFileLocation.text`

Here I start looking in the home directory of the user executing the script, and I make sure no symlinks are listed, and I would like to put the path+filename in a variable.

The problem is, if there are more than 1 files of the name MyFile, they will all be listed. I would like to have only the most recent file. I don't know how many times this file is located on the computer (I would like to use this script a bit flexible)


Any help is supurbly appriciated.

If redirect the output of the find command to a file (>>MyFileLocation.text), then the output is not going to be in the varaible anymore. I'd recommend not to redirect the output to a file. Just store it in the variable. If you really want the path in the file, you can do:
or, another way to have the path in both the variable and the file:
This will put the path to the most recent modified file in $variable :

Thanks Hko,

I will try this out. I didn't look at xargs well enough. Also thanks for the tip on the variable, I wasn't precises enough in explaining the problem. What I do in the script, is to declare a number of variables, which I use throughout the script. I also write them in a log file, for un-install information.

again, thanks.