Ruby: Finding most recently modified file

Question

What's an idiomatic way to find the most recently modified file within a directory?

score 60 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:34

60

Dir.glob("*").max_by {|f| File.mtime(f)}

answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:34

Steve Wilhelm

Beautiful solution. Thank you. – Mike Jan 28 '11 at 00:41
6

Dir.glob("/path/to/search/**/*.*").max_by {|f| File.mtime(f)} – WiredIn Sep 01 '15 at 18:22
@WiredIn 's comment reduces the results to files which have a period in them (only files with an extension). See following for including 'hidden' dotfiles... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11385795/ruby-list-directory-with-dir-including-dotfiles-but-not-and – ives Jan 25 '19 at 01:09

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:34

4

I'm not sure if there really is an idiom for this. I would do

Dir["*"].sort_by { |file_name| File.stat(file_name).mtime }

Seeing how three people gave more or less the same answer at the same time. This must be it.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:34

EnabrenTane

Downvoted because this didn't answer the OP's question (returns sorted list of times instead of the most recent one). It's also less concise than the other two answers. – ives Jan 25 '19 at 01:13
You can do better obviously. Why didn't you answer it then? – von spotz Jul 31 '23 at 08:28

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:31

3

Dir["*"].sort { |a,b| File.mtime(a) <=> File.mtime(b) }.last

This is not recursive.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 00:31

cam

3 Answers3