linuxsearchlimitls

first two results from ls command


I am using ls -l -t to get a list of files in a directory ordered by time.

I would like to limit the search result to the top 2 files in the list.
Is this possible?
I've tried with grep and I struggled.


Solution

  • You can pipe it into head:

    ls -l -t | head -3
    

    Will give you top 3 lines (2 files and the total).

    This will just give you the first 2 lines of files, skipping the size line:

    ls -l -t | tail -n +2 | head -2
    

    tail strips the first line, then head outputs the next 2 lines.