I feel like I am missing something very simple and I was wondering if it possible to sow the last few lines of the last 4 modified files. I tried something like this
tail | ls -lt | head -5
but I think I should iterate over ls | -lt
result and apply tail to it and I am not sure how to do it. Any help is appreciated
Best Answer
Before I start, it’s generally considered bad practice to use the output of
ls
as input for something else; a common flaw being that it may not work as intended for files containing white space/new line in their name.With that limitation in mind, you will probably find that
ls | something
will work OK most of the time.You are heading in the right direction with your command, here is one solution with the above caveat about
ls
limitations:This will throw a non fatal error if there are subdirectories in your listing.