Print a file's last modified date in Bash

bash shell file date unix
Hokerie picture Hokerie · May 6, 2013 · Viewed 185.8k times · Source

I can't seem to find how to print out the date of a file. I'm so far able to print out all the files in a directory, but I need to print out the dates with it.

I know I need to attach a date format with the echo of the entry, but all I can't find the correct format.

echo "Please type in the directory you want all the files to be listed"

read directory 

for entry in "$directory"/*
do
  echo "$entry"
done

Answer

mmond picture mmond · Dec 27, 2013

Isn't the 'date' command much simpler? No need for awk, stat, etc.

date -r <filename>

Also, consider looking at the man page for date formatting; for example with common date and time format:

date -r <filename> "+%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S"

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