Sorting Directories by creation time

Question

I am logged into an ftp directory using ftplib and have listed the directories contained inside using:

ftp.retrlines('LIST')

This is what it gives me in the terminal:

enter image description here

This list is in alphabetical order but i was wondering if there is any way to sort it by the dates given on the left?

I want to be able to sort it from newest to oldest.

Thanks! :)

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

2

Use strptime() to turn the date strings into datetime objects, then sort.

d = datetime.strptime(date_string, '%m-%d-%y %I:%M%p')

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Community

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1

answered Sep 09 '14 at 18:18

Celeo

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tomer.z · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-09T18:31:35.197

Should be something like this:

sorted = list()
dirs = ftp.retrlines('LIST')
times = list()
for dir in dirs:
    times.append(datetime.strptime(dir, '%m-%d-%y %I:%M%p'))
*sort times with some algorithm from python library* (pretty sure times.sort() should work but I cant say for sure
for i in range(0,len(times)):
    for dir in dirs:
        if dir.startswith(times[i]):
            sorted.append(dir)
            break

What Celeo said is right but will only give you the sorted times without the directories, this will give you both.

Sorting Directories by creation time

2 Answers2