16.27 newer: Print the Name of the Newest File

Here's a quick alias that figures out which file in a group is the newest:

-d
 

alias newer "ls -dt \!* | head -1"

For example, let's say that you have two files named plan.v1 and and plan.v2 . If you're like me, you (often) edit the wrong version by mistake - and then, a few hours later, can't remember what you did. You can use this alias to figure out which file you changed most recently:

*
 

% 

newer plan.v*


plan.v1

Oops. I edited the wrong version by mistake. I could also have used backquotes ( 9.16 ) to handle this in one step:

% 

emacs `newer plan.*`