linux locate command sort by date

Question

The linux locate command is great at finding files quicky.

My question: how can we use the locate command so that the results are returned in date/time order?

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 17 '13 at 05:39

7

This works as long as there are not spaces in the filenames, but errors if there are too many files (see http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#Argument-list-too-long):

$ ls -td $(locate sh)
bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long

This will work even with spaces or other characters in filenames, but doesn't sort correctly with too many files:

locate something -0 | xargs -0 ls -ltd

The following will always work (although it might take awhile):

locate something -0 | xargs -0 stat -c'%Y %n' | sort -n

answered Jul 17 '13 at 05:39

onionjake

Piping to `stat` was ten times faster than piping to `ls` for me, although it doesn't show all the `ls -l` information, obviously. – Sparhawk Oct 06 '16 at 04:17
to show modification time in human readable format (works as long as there is no # character in the filename: `locate SomeSearchTerm -0 | xargs -0 stat -c'%Y#%y %n' | sort -n | cut -d"#" -f2 | sed "s/\.[0-9]*//"` – qwertz Jul 30 '22 at 20:11

RedGrittyBrick · Answer 2 · 2012-08-27T11:49:41.923

3

How about:

ls -td $(locate something)

or

ls -td1 $(locate something)

edited Aug 27 '12 at 11:49

answered Aug 27 '12 at 11:36

RedGrittyBrick

Maybe a `-d` would be handy, too. – choroba Aug 27 '12 at 11:47
@choroba: good point, I'll update the answer. – RedGrittyBrick Aug 27 '12 at 11:49
1

This fails for files with spaces in their name. – Sparhawk Oct 06 '16 at 04:14

2 Answers2