How to view recent files from the command-line?

Question

Is it possible to view recently accessed files using a single command in the command-line?

Could you please provide an explanation of what exactly the command does?

Answer 1

My "recently" is 5 minutes =)

recently=5
find . -type f -amin "$recently"

Breakdown

• find

  search for files in a directory hierarchy

• .

  search in the current folder and all subfolders

• -type f

  search only fort files

• -amin 5

  File was last accessed 5 minutes ago.

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Or perhaps you mean the recently used files in your Desktop Environment, than you need something like

awk -F"file://|\" " '/file:\/\// {print $2}' ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

Breakdown

• awk

  pattern scanning and text processing language

• -F"file://|\" "

  define two field separators, file:// and "

• /file:\/\//

  only lines with file:// are interesting

• {print $2}

  the path is in column 2

Answer 2

The term recently is relative, I am going to assume last 10 minutes as recent in my answer (change that to fit your need).

Using find:

find . -type f -amin -10 

Here the -amin -10 would find all files (-type f) in the current directory and all subdirectories accessed within last 10 minutes.

For files accessed less than 30 minutes ago:

find . -type f -amin -30

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Using zsh:

print -l **/*(.am-10)

**/* looks recursively for files and the glob qualifier (.am-10) finds files (.) accessed within the last 10 minutes (am-10).