Descending list ordered by file modification time

Question

How can I generate a list of files in a directory [for example, "/mnt/hdd/PUB/"] ordered by the files modification time? [in descending order, the oldest modified file is at the lists end]

ls -A -lRt would be great: https://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=AzuSVmrJ

But if a file is changed in a directory, it lists the full directory, so the pastebined link isn't good [I don't want a list ordered by "directories", I need a "per file" ordered list]

OS: OpenWrt [no Perl -> not enough space for it :( + no "stat", or "file" command].

Answer 1

Use find and sort:

find YOUR_START_DIR -type f -print0 |
    xargs -r -0 ls -l | 
        sort -k 6.2,6.5nr \
             -k 6.7,6.8nr \
             -k 6.10,6.11nr \
             -k 7.2,7.3nr \
             -k 7.5,7.6nr

the long list of k options after sort define the year, month, day, hour and minute as sort keys and order by them in that order.

Files saved on the same minute won't get ordered. If you want to go down to seconds and more, add "--full-time" to the ls command, and add new keys at the end of the sort command.

Answer 2

Here's an ugly answer that partially works for me in cygwin:

 ls -A -lRt --full-time | sort | uniq | grep -v '^total\|:$'

• Recursively lists files, displays full timestamps for every file
• sorts them
• discards duplicates
• Greps out a few non-file entries such as "total files in directory X" and the header rows for files you're recursing into.

Answer 3

"Changing" the file in the directory may well update the directory's modification time. But if you are not interested in the directories, grep them out:

ls -AlRt | egrep -v '^d'