Script help

[NiftyFedora Mitch]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> wrote:
> On 19Sep2008 14:08, Dennis Kaptain <dkaptain at yahoo.com.mx> wrote:
> | > > Can anyone rattle this off of the top of their head?
> | >
> | > `ls -t myfile*.txt | head -1` might work for you.
> |
> | ls -t by itself may give you more than one filename per line.
> | Use ls -t1
> | that will assure you get only one file name output from head.
>
> Um, no. ls only multicolumns if you point its output to a terminal;
> the multicolumning was an innovation brought in BSD. Earlier lses
> always single columned, and continue to single column if sent to any
> non-terminal. Otherwise every script on the planet reading from ls
> would break.
>
> So, you do not need the "1" option in a pipeline, and never have.
>
> BTW, "sed 1q" is shorter than "head -1". I've never had much truck with
> "head"...

And if the question was to tinker with a set of files
that was generated with a script like this?:

#!/bin/bash
 cd /tmp
 mkdir tinker/ tinker/foo/ tinker/foo/bar/ tinker/foo/bletch/
 for I in tinker/ tinker/foo/ tinker/foo/bar/ tinker/foo/bletch/
 do
 touch $I/myfile387465893495643658734.txt
 touch $I/myfile387465893495643658734.txt
 touch $I/myfile547647453645635632454.txt
 touch $I/myfile563546356243546767546.txt
 touch $I/myfile465565634678567345656.txt
 touch $I/myfile456674567452345566345.txt
 touch $I/myfile563546356243546767546.txt
 done


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