Printing out contents of a directory in order of creation date

Question

Has anybody accomplished this with python?

Here's what I have so far...

if os.path.isdir(options.map_file_directory):
    searchedfile = glob.glob("*.map")
    files = sorted( searchedfile, key = lambda file: os.path.getctime(file))

    for i in files:
        print("{} - {}".format(i, time.ctime(os.path.getctime(i))) )

*Here's what I have so far* and, does it work? No? What is going wrong? — Tim, Sep 08 '15 at 18:17
So files is an empty list. I guess `glob.glob("*.map")` is not working correctly — Tim, Sep 08 '15 at 18:20
what in this code are you expecting to make it look at `options.map_file_directory` instead of whatever the current directory happens to be (which could be anything)? — Corley Brigman, Sep 08 '15 at 18:22
related: [How do you get a directory listing sorted by creation date in python?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/168409/4279) — jfs, Sep 08 '15 at 18:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 08 '15 at 18:24

1

Resolved my own problem. Had to do with the way I was "globbing"

if os.path.isdir(options.map_file_directory):
    print ("this is a test 4")
    searchedfile = glob.glob(r'{}\*.map'.format(options.map_file_directory))
    files = sorted( searchedfile, key = lambda file: os.path.getctime(file))

    for i in files:
        print("{} - {}".format(i, time.ctime(os.path.getctime(i))) )

answered Sep 08 '15 at 18:24

rockymonkey555

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2

(1) use `files = glob(os.path.join(options.map_file_directory, "*.map"))` (2) you could sort inplace e.g., by modification date: `files.sort(key=os.path.getmtime)` (3) [`os.path.getctime`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.path.html#os.path.getctime) does not (always) return a creation date on POSIX. – jfs Sep 08 '15 at 18:34
Got an error with (1). Module object isn't callable. – rockymonkey555 Sep 08 '15 at 19:24
`from glob import glob` – jfs Sep 08 '15 at 19:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 08 '15 at 21:34

When you don't want to just sort on the time value but also print it out you can store the time in the list you want to sort and spare the second call to getting the time again:

import os
from glob import iglob

# ...

if os.path.isdir(options.map_file_directory):
    modification_times_and_filenames = sorted(
        (os.path.getmtime(n), n)
        for n in iglob(os.path.join(options.map_file_directory, '*.map'))
    )
    for modification_time, filename in modification_times_and_filenames:
        print('{0} - {1}'.format(filename, modification_time))

Printing out contents of a directory in order of creation date

2 Answers2