On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 19Sep2008 14:08, Dennis Kaptain <dkaptain@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > | > > Can anyone rattle this off of the top of their head? > | > > | > `ls -t myfile*.txt | head -1` might work for you. > | > | ls -t by itself may give you more than one filename per line. > | Use ls -t1 > | that will assure you get only one file name output from head. > > Um, no. ls only multicolumns if you point its output to a terminal; > the multicolumning was an innovation brought in BSD. Earlier lses > always single columned, and continue to single column if sent to any > non-terminal. Otherwise every script on the planet reading from ls > would break. > > So, you do not need the "1" option in a pipeline, and never have. > > BTW, "sed 1q" is shorter than "head -1". I've never had much truck with > "head"... And if the question was to tinker with a set of files that was generated with a script like this?: #!/bin/bash cd /tmp mkdir tinker/ tinker/foo/ tinker/foo/bar/ tinker/foo/bletch/ for I in tinker/ tinker/foo/ tinker/foo/bar/ tinker/foo/bletch/ do touch $I/myfile387465893495643658734.txt touch $I/myfile387465893495643658734.txt touch $I/myfile547647453645635632454.txt touch $I/myfile563546356243546767546.txt touch $I/myfile465565634678567345656.txt touch $I/myfile456674567452345566345.txt touch $I/myfile563546356243546767546.txt done -- NiftyFedora T o m M i t c h e l l -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines