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 I tried some silly script that would make my life easier - do add it to your ~/.bashrc if you 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 files and dirs in the specified path or consider ”.” as the default path: "${1:-.}"/*
• Using file and latest local vars: if $file -nt $latest is True, then $file is newer than $latest (according to modification date).
• Finally check if it’s a dir or file - if dir cd to it, else tail it!

Hope this helps you guys, as it’s helping me. Happy hacking!