Bash: Sort Array Elements by File Date

Question

I have a Bash script that has an array called myarray.

This array contains complete file location paths for 4 files.

What I am trying to do is sort the array elements by the file creation date.

So just as a quick example, if I have the following 4 files in the array:

/tmp/file1.txt (in index 0)
/tmp/test/file1.txt (in index 1)
/tmp/test1/file1.txt (in index 2)
/tmp/test2/file1.txt (in index 3)

...and the file in index 2 has newer creation date then the others, it should be sorted into index 1 and so on.

I originally thought the following would do it:

myarray=($(for each in ${myarray[@]}; do echo $each; done | sort -n))

But if I look at the array contents I do not see the newest file in index 0.

Would anyone know of a way to accomplish this in bash?

Your attempt can't work since nothing there says that the array elements are to be interpreted as file names. — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Jan 14 '17 at 15:33

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 14 '17 at 15:32

The following sorts the files by the modification date, as creation date isn't supported on the system I tested the script on. Replacing %Y with %W should output the creation time if supported.

#! /bin/bash
files=(*.txt)
while IFS= read -r line ; do
    sorted+=("$line")
done < <(
    for f in "${files[@]}" ; do
        echo $(stat -c %Y -- "$f")$'\t'"$f"
    done | sort -nk1,1 | cut -t $'\t' -f2-
)

echo "${sorted[@]}"

It works for files with spaces in their names. Filenames containing newlines can break it, but you don't use newlines in filenames, right?

Bash: Sort Array Elements by File Date

1 Answers1