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?

onionjake · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-17 05:39:57Z

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, 2013 at 5:39

onionjake

3433 silver badges5 bronze badges

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 6, 2016 at 4:17
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, 2022 at 20:11

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RedGrittyBrick · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-27 11:49:41Z

3

How about:

ls -td $(locate something)

or

ls -td1 $(locate something)

answered Aug 27, 2012 at 11:36

RedGrittyBrick

82.4k20 gold badges138 silver badges206 bronze badges

Maybe a -d would be handy, too.
– choroba
Aug 27, 2012 at 11:47
@choroba: good point, I'll update the answer.
– RedGrittyBrick
Aug 27, 2012 at 11:49
1

This fails for files with spaces in their name.
– Sparhawk
Oct 6, 2016 at 4:14

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2 Answers 2