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How do you get a directory listing sorted by creation date in python?

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How do you sort data by date in python?

To sort a Python date string list using the sort function, you'll have to convert the dates in objects and apply the sort on them. For this you can use the key named attribute of the sort function and provide it a lambda that creates a datetime object for each date and compares them based on this date object.

How do you sort a directory by content in Python?

In Python, the os module provides a function listdir(dir_path), which returns a list of file and sub-directory names in the given directory path. Then using the filter() function create list of files only. Then sort this list of file names based on the name using the sorted() function.


I've done this in the past for a Python script to determine the last updated files in a directory:

import glob
import os

search_dir = "/mydir/"
# remove anything from the list that is not a file (directories, symlinks)
# thanks to J.F. Sebastion for pointing out that the requirement was a list 
# of files (presumably not including directories)  
files = list(filter(os.path.isfile, glob.glob(search_dir + "*")))
files.sort(key=lambda x: os.path.getmtime(x))

That should do what you're looking for based on file mtime.

EDIT: Note that you can also use os.listdir() in place of glob.glob() if desired - the reason I used glob in my original code was that I was wanting to use glob to only search for files with a particular set of file extensions, which glob() was better suited to. To use listdir here's what it would look like:

import os

search_dir = "/mydir/"
os.chdir(search_dir)
files = filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir(search_dir))
files = [os.path.join(search_dir, f) for f in files] # add path to each file
files.sort(key=lambda x: os.path.getmtime(x))

Update: to sort dirpath's entries by modification date in Python 3:

import os
from pathlib import Path

paths = sorted(Path(dirpath).iterdir(), key=os.path.getmtime)

(put @Pygirl's answer here for greater visibility)

If you already have a list of filenames files, then to sort it inplace by creation time on Windows (make sure that list contains absolute path):

files.sort(key=os.path.getctime)

The list of files you could get, for example, using glob as shown in @Jay's answer.


old answer Here's a more verbose version of @Greg Hewgill's answer. It is the most conforming to the question requirements. It makes a distinction between creation and modification dates (at least on Windows).

#!/usr/bin/env python
from stat import S_ISREG, ST_CTIME, ST_MODE
import os, sys, time

# path to the directory (relative or absolute)
dirpath = sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) == 2 else r'.'

# get all entries in the directory w/ stats
entries = (os.path.join(dirpath, fn) for fn in os.listdir(dirpath))
entries = ((os.stat(path), path) for path in entries)

# leave only regular files, insert creation date
entries = ((stat[ST_CTIME], path)
           for stat, path in entries if S_ISREG(stat[ST_MODE]))
#NOTE: on Windows `ST_CTIME` is a creation date 
#  but on Unix it could be something else
#NOTE: use `ST_MTIME` to sort by a modification date
        
for cdate, path in sorted(entries):
    print time.ctime(cdate), os.path.basename(path)

Example:

$ python stat_creation_date.py
Thu Feb 11 13:31:07 2009 stat_creation_date.py

There is an os.path.getmtime function that gives the number of seconds since the epoch and should be faster than os.stat.

import os 

os.chdir(directory)
sorted(filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir('.')), key=os.path.getmtime)

Here's my version:

def getfiles(dirpath):
    a = [s for s in os.listdir(dirpath)
         if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(dirpath, s))]
    a.sort(key=lambda s: os.path.getmtime(os.path.join(dirpath, s)))
    return a

First, we build a list of the file names. isfile() is used to skip directories; it can be omitted if directories should be included. Then, we sort the list in-place, using the modify date as the key.