CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshell
user1773603
user1773603

Reputation:

Set modified date of a file to the oldest in a directory

I know the command touch file_example to set the file file_example to the newest modified file (which appears at the bottom when I do a ls -lrt).

Now, I would like to execute a short command to set the file file_example to the oldest file in a given directory, i.e which appears on first line when I do a ls -lrt.

Is it possible to make it with a quick command ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 189

Answers (1)

Benjamin W.
Benjamin W.

Reputation: 52112

You can loop over all files, and whenever you find one that's older than file_example, you can update file_example:

for f in ./*; do
    # Skip directories
    [[ -d $f ]] && continue

    # Compare and update
    [[ $f -ot file_example ]] && touch file_example -r "$f"
done

If you want to include hidden files, you can either loop with for f in ./* ./.*, or use shopt -s dotglob first.

This can be packaged in a shell function:

settooldest() {
    local file=$1
    local dir=$2
    local f
    for f in "$dir"/*; do
        [[ -d $f ]] && continue
        [[ $f -ot $file ]] && touch "$file" -r "$f"
    done
}

Which is called like

settooldest file_example path/to/dir

Upvotes: 1

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