---
title: "Reading Logs Made Easy With Bash."
description: "Most of the web programmers would normally look into their applications/server error logs when they find issues, indeed."
url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/reading-logs-made-easy-bash/"
canonical_url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/reading-logs-made-easy-bash/"
markdown_url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/blog/reading-logs-made-easy-bash.md"
publishDate: "2012-06-07T00:00:00.000Z"
author: "Hemanth HM"
category: "linux"
tags: ["bash"]
word_count: 217
reading_time_minutes: 2
x_markdown_tokens: 391
content_signal: "ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes"
---

# Reading Logs Made Easy With Bash.

> Most of the web programmers would normally look into their applications/server error logs when they find issues, indeed.

Most of the web programmers would normally look into their applications/server error logs when they find issues, indeed it's a pain when the log path is filled with directories, it's sometimes annoying to do an  ls -l and look for the latest directory and then cd it, a bit better case is when one tab_completes to change directories.

It would be very easy if we could **cdn** as in cd to the new dir ;)

So /me tired some silly script that would make my life easier, do add it to your ~/.bash.rc  if we like it!

**Here is the simple script to cdn :**

` cdn() {`
    
    
    local file latest; 
    for file in "${1:-.}"/*; do 
        [[ $file -nt $latest ]] && latest=$file
    done; 
    printf '%s\n' "$latest"
    [[ -d $latest ]] && cd $latest || tailf $latest
    

} 

**Usage: cdn [dir]**

**Digging into the code:**

  * Get all the file and dirs in the specified path or consider "." as the default path ` "${1:-.}"/* `

  * Using file and latest local vars : if `$file -nt $latest` `True` if $file is newer than $latest (according to modification date).

  * Finally check if it's a dir or file, if file cd to it else tail it!

**Hope this helps you guys, as it's helping me, happy hacking!**