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I have multiple sub-directories (which are named using GUIDs), which contain results files from computer simulations that I have been running. The files are all named in the following way: hydro_configuration_xxxx.xyz, where xxxx is a four-digit number from 0000 upwards; the latest file has the highest four-digit number. I would like to be able to list the latest file in each subdirectory, along with the directory that it is in.

So, for example, given sub-directory fc86783b-bcc5-4456-8964-049682ee81aa containing files hydro_configuration_0000.xyz to hydro_configuration_0123.xyz, and directory e608273d-35bd-442c-9de1-0ec184aa0d95 containing files hydro_configuration_0000.xyz to hydro_configuration_3564.xyz, I need a command that produces the output:

./fc86783b-bcc5-4456-8964-049682ee81aa/hydro_configuration_0123.xyz 
./e608273d-35bd-442c-9de1-0ec184aa0d95/hydro_configuration_3564.xyz
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  • A helpful user left an answer but deleted it before I could accept. The following command gave me the output that I needed: find n512/ -type d | while read d; do ls -ltr $d/hydro* | tail -n 1; done |awk -F " " '{print $8}' >out.txt
    – endian
    Commented Oct 12, 2011 at 12:33

1 Answer 1

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Create bash script latestfile.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
ls -1tr "$1" | tail -n1

Run chmod +x latestfile.sh to make it executable.

Then execute the following command:

find test -mindepth 1 -type d -name "hydro_configuration_*" -printf "%p/" -a -exec ./latestfile.sh {} \;

This will find all directories matching the pattern and print their names followed by a /, followed by the name of the latest file in there.

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  • Thanks, I actually used an alternative approach but I'm sure yours would work as well. Since the original user who helped me deleted his answer, I will accept yours instead!
    – endian
    Commented Oct 12, 2011 at 13:15

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