This is really quick, really simple, and really useful.
It’s often helpful to see which files in a directory have been modified the most recently, For example, which logfiles have been written to recently?
A very simple command would be:
$ ls -lt | head
The ls lists the files; the -l gives a long listing with more detail; the -t sorts files by their last modified time, newest first, and finally piping the result through head shows only the first 10 lines of the output.
For convenience, I define this in my ~/.bash_profile:
alias new='ls -lt|head'
Now, simply typing new at the command prompt shows me the newest files in the current directory. Try it: you’ll use it more than you think.
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I generally do it the other way round …
‘ls -lrt | tail’ or just ‘ls -lrt’ which leaves the most recently used files listed in my terminal