Find, and sort results by date created

Question

How can I sort the results of find? I want to sort by date created asc?

find /docs -type f | sort

Sorts by filename not date created. Thanks.

quanta · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-28 10:34:01Z

up vote 1 down vote accepted

AFAIK, Linux doesn't record the creation time, so the short answer is you cannot.

For the modification time, try this:

$ find /docs -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -k1 -n

or:

$ find /docs -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat -c "%y %n" | sort

answered Nov 28 '11 at 10:34

quanta
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1

You beat me too it! Justin, for some discussion on what ctime actually means, look at perlmonks.org/?node_id=741616 – cjc Nov 28 '11 at 10:36

I'm getting: stat: illegal option -- c usage: stat [-FlLnqrsx] [-f format] [-t timefmt] [file ...] – Justin Nov 28 '11 at 11:50

Which distro are you using? – quanta Nov 28 '11 at 14:51

1 Answer