Recently, as I was troubleshooting some static files sync, I wanted to know which files were changed, updated in the last 2 weeks. As with most things, if you are not doing them routinely, you forgot them, it’s a normal, human nature right?! So, here’s a neat command that will list files older than certain period of days.
Modified, changed and updated are used interchangeably, although they differ from a filesystem standpoint.
- Modified = data modification.
- Changed = file metadata changed.
Prerequisites
- Shell environment
Solution
Linux / macOS
Find all modified files in the last 14 days from /home/staticfiles directory and save the files full directory path in a tmp file:
find /home/staticfiles -type f -mtime -14 -ls > tmp
Note:
-mtime n: find files and directories modified exactly N days ago.-mtime +n: find files and directories modified more than N days ago.-mtime -n: find files and directories modified less than N days ago.
Related post: mtime timestamp and the 24h period simplified.
Windows
Find the last 5 recently modified files:
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Users\devcoops\staticfiles" -Recurse | Sort LastWriteTime -Descending | Select -First 5 | Get-Item | foreach { "$_" }
The parameters themselves are mostly clear, unambiguous.
Conclusion
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