How to list the last modified files in a specific directory recursively

It may be a generic Linux question but I'll give it a try here.

I need a list of recently modified files very often and currently for it I am piping ls output to grep with the param on today or a certain hour, but I need to change the grep param frequently to get an updated list, being a bit unproductive.

Is there an easy command to list the last modified files on a certain path ?

To find the last 5 modified files from a certain directory recursively, from that directory run:

find . -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -k1,1nr | head -5

• %T@ with -printf predicate of find will get modification time since epoch for the files, %p will print the file names

• sort -k1,1nr will reverse numerically sort the result according to the epoch time

• head -5 will get us the last modified five file names

If you just want to search only in the current directory (not recursively), use stat:

stat -c '%Y %n' * | sort -k1,1nr | head -5

Or find:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -k1,1nr | head -5

Check man find and man stat to get more idea.

The script below lists all files recursively inside a directory, edited shorter ago than an arbitrary time. Additionally, it displays the time span since the last edit.

It can be used with the command:

findrecent <directory> <time(in hours)>

as shown below:

In this example, all files on my Desktop, edited less than 36 hours ago are listed.

The script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import time
import sys

directory = sys.argv[1]

try:
    t = int(sys.argv[2])
except IndexError:
    t = 1

currtime = time.time(); t = t*3600

def calc_time(minutes):
    # create neatly displayed time
    if minutes < 60:
        return "[edited "+str(minutes)+" minutes ago]"
    else:
        hrs = int(minutes/60); minutes = int(minutes - hrs*60)
        return "[edited "+str(hrs)+" hours and "+str(minutes)+" minutes ago]"

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for file in files:
        file = os.path.join(root, file); ftime = os.path.getctime(file)
        edited = currtime - ftime
        if edited < t:
            print(file, calc_time(int(edited/60)))

How to use

1. Create, if it doesn't exist yet, the directory ~/bin
2. Copy the script above into an empty file, save it as findrecent in ~/bin
3. Make the script executable
4. Log out and back in and you're done

Note

• if no time is given, the script lists all files, edited in the last hour
• if a directory includes spaces, use quotes, like in the example