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Comment by pif | Hacker News Reader

Why not recursive? Use the following command if you want to have one directory per idea, rather than a single file:

  find -type f -print0 | xargs --null ls -ltr

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I know it gets talked about quite a lot round here but I find zsh really quite useful for this type of thing..

the zsh equivalent of the above, for me would be

    ls **/* -ltr

(Edit)[ for an exact reproduction ]

    ls **/*(.) -ltr

if you wanted to put a date range on it.. for example, only files from the last 5 days..

    ls **/*(m-5) -ltr

or the last 5 hours

    ls **/*(mh-5) -ltr

there's loads more of these http://grml.org/zsh/zsh-lovers.html, obviously your shell is a matter of preference, and if you know bash or something similar well enough then the incentive to change is obviously lessened.. but personally I've found that a whole series of small improvements (for me) added up to a pretty large win

edit: as pointed out by pyre, my initial suggestion isn't an exact replica.. but was the first thing that came to mind for me.. i guess s/the\ zsh\ equivalent/something\ similar\ in\ zsh/

edit again:

    /tmp/ $ mkdir -p /tmp/test1/test2/test3                          
    /tmp/ $ touch /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4                       
    /tmp/ $ ls -ltr /tmp/test1/**/*(.)                               
    -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  7 15:49 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4 
    /tmp/ $ find /tmp/test1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ltr       
    -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  7 15:49 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4

  **/*

does not match the '-type f' part of his filter:

  $ mkdir -p /tmp/test1/test2/test3
  $ touch /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4
  $ ls -ltr /tmp/test1/**/*
  -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp    0 2012-08-07 09:59 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4

  /tmp/test1/test2:
  total 4
  drwxr-xr-x 2 usr grp 4096 2012-08-07 09:59 test3

  /tmp/test1/test2/test3:
  total 0
  -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 2012-08-07 09:59 test4

On the other hand:

  $ find /tmp/test1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ltr
  -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 2012-08-07 09:59 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4

Nice to know, thanks! But, how does it work with file names containing spaces (or other strange characters)?

Edit: just to clarify: my question concerns the zsh method. Regarding find+xargs, I wrote that comment :-) Actually, this edit would be an answer to zap; HN does not let me reply directly to him: is it to prevent flame-wars?

Thats what the print0 arg in find and the --null arg in xargs are for.

print0 prints the file name followed by a NULL character (rather than newline) Using the --null/-0 arg makes xargs look for NULLs as delimiters and treat everything else literally.

   /tmp/ $ mkdir -p test1/test2/test3                                       

   /tmp/ $ touch test1/test2/test3/test4                                    
   
   /tmp/ $ ls -ltr test1/**/*(.)                                            
   -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:11 test1/test2/test3/test4              

   /tmp/ $ touch test1/test2/test3/test\ with\ spaces                       

   /tmp/ $ ls -ltr test1/**/*(.)                                            
   -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:11 test1/test2/test3/test4              
   -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:12 test1/test2/test3/test with spaces

I keep considering moving to zsh. This example sure makes it look worthwhile. Thanks.

I've used `ls -ltr` for years, and just recently I wrote a recursive version with the help of my local LUG mailing list. Here is my favorite version (put into a script in ~/bin):

    find "$1" -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td_%TH:%TM:%TS\t%p\n' | sort -r

It'd be easy to add `-type f` if that's what you want.

find(1) has an -ls built-in, thought the format is slightly different. You can also use -printf to suit. Also, later GNU finds make some uses of xargs unnecessary.

    find -type f -exec ls -ltr {} +

That made me read about `+` accumulation, happy day.

I didn't know about + either -- neato! Thanks.

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