Scans a directory for files matching a pattern and returns the path to the most recently modified file. Useful for loading the latest data export or report.
Usage
latest_file(
path,
pattern = NULL,
full.names = TRUE,
recursive = FALSE,
by = c("mtime", "ctime", "atime")
)Arguments
- path
Directory path to search in.
- pattern
Regular expression pattern to filter files. Default NULL matches all files.
- full.names
Logical. If TRUE (default), returns the full file path. If FALSE, returns just the filename.
- recursive
Logical. If TRUE, searches subdirectories recursively. Default FALSE.
- by
How to determine "most recent": "mtime" (modification time, default), "ctime" (creation/change time), or "atime" (access time).
Value
Character string with the path to the most recent file, or NULL if no matching files are found.
Examples
# Create temporary files for demonstration
tmp <- tempdir()
writeLines("a", file.path(tmp, "file1.csv"))
Sys.sleep(0.1)
writeLines("b", file.path(tmp, "file2.csv"))
# Find the most recent CSV
latest_file(tmp, pattern = "\\.csv$")
#> [1] "/tmp/RtmpCxkqGh/file2.csv"
# Clean up
unlink(file.path(tmp, c("file1.csv", "file2.csv")))