[ale] Bash script SOLVED

[Ron]

Boris Borisov via Ale wrote on 2025-04-12 14:42:

> I'm trying to list all files on SSD disk (Windows) and to find the 
> oldest file and the newest file.

This was way, *way*, WAY harder than expected.


Here's how to find the newest and oldest files / directories across a 
disk - adjust the starting point to suit your mount point:

find $mount -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM:%TS %p\0" \
	| sort --zero-terminated                   \
	| tr '\0' '\n'                             \
	| less

Then, look at top and bottom lines of output.

Switch `less` for `head -n 1` or `tail -n 1` for seeing single lines of 
output.

Note, this method will handle files with new lines in the file name 
(that was a rabbit hole! What a terrible idea).



So, a breakdown on what it's doing:


 > find $mount

Will find all files and folders starting at $mount

 > -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM:%TS %p\0"

Will print to the screen "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS filename[NULL]" format 
(NULL is important for line-feed filenames, unlikely on a Windows disk)


 > \

Code continues on next line...


 > | sort --zero-terminated \

Pipe to `sort` command, letting it know that lines are delimited with 
nulls (x00) instead of newlines

 > | tr '\0' '\n' \

Translate those nulls back to newlines

 > | less

Lets one view the results.


Tested on ~/ which contains > 2,779,286 entries and returned results 
from 1927 (?!?) at the top through to today at the bottom.



Bonus: to get just the newest and oldest items, this will work 
*sometimes* but fails sometimes, and I'm not sure why - if anyone can 
explain, I'd love to hear it:


find $mount -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM:%TS %p\0" \
	| sort --zero-terminated \
	| tr '\0' '\n' \
	| tee >(head -n 1) >(tail -n 1) > /dev/null

That final line will output everything, and send it to `head -n 1` and 
send it to `tail -n 1` then send the "everything" output from `tee` to 
/dev/null, leaving just the output from `head` and `tail`.


An example where it does work:

$ ll /tmp/test -trA
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 uid1 uid1 0 1999-01-01 00:00  file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 uid1 uid1 0 2020-01-01 00:00 'file!'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 uid1 uid1 0 2025-01-01 00:00  file2

$ find /tmp/test/ -printf "%TY-%TM-%Td %TH:%Tm:%TS %p\0" \
	| sort --zero-terminated
	| tr '\0' '\n' \
	| tee >(head -n 1) >(tail -n 1) > /dev/null
1999-00-01 00:01:00.0000000000 /tmp/test/file1
2025-44-16 18:04:07.9633502140 /tmp/test/



Let us know what you find...


This was an interesting project: poorly documented `find` options, 
discovery of files on my disk with "\n" in the name, how to deal with 
"\n" in file names, brush-up on printf format options, first usage of 
`sort --zero-terminated`, first use of multiple sub-shells,...


Probably couldn't have done it without AI assistance (https://you.com) 
but it was a bit niche even for that.