File list as per their usage

What do I do if I want the list of files from some specific directory, as per their usage?

That is, I want a list of files in ascending order as per their last usage with respect to time. In that case the file that was accessed last should be listed first.

Solution 1:

You can use

ls -l --time=atime --sort=t

Explanation:

• ls -l lists the files with the detailed list format
• --time=atime --sort=t sets the sorting order to the time of the last access

Example:

$ touch foo bar foobar
$ ls -l
insgesamt 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 bar
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foobar
$ sleep 60; touch baz
$ ls -l 
insgesamt 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 bar
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:58 baz
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foobar

After some minutes:

$ touch -a foo # sets atime to cuurent time
$ ls -lt
insgesamt 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:58 baz
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foobar
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 bar
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foo
$ ls -lt --time=atime
insgesamt 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 12:01 foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:58 baz
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 foobar
-rw-r--r-- 1 Wayne users 0 Okt  4 11:56 bar

Conclusion:

ls -lt --time=atime

does what you need

Solution 2:

Assuming no filename with newline in name, do:

stat -c '%X %n' * | sort -k1,1rn | cut -d' ' -f2-

• stat -c '%X %n' * prints the files in the current directory with access time (precisely relatime) in Epoch as first column, and filename as next

• sort -k1,1rn sorts that by first field (time)

• cut -d' ' -f2- gets the file name only

If you want to get the access time too along with the file name:

stat -c '%X %x %n' * | sort -k1,1rn | cut -d' ' -f2-