command to run latest java jar in a directory

Question

I'm currently running my jars with $ java -jar /path/to/fooproject-x.y.z-standalone.jar where x.y.z is the version. I could've sworn I saw a very simple, slightly modified version of this command that just runs the highest version jar in the directory and I can't for the life of me find it again. This is a real thing right?

Answer 1

Please consider this command:

$ ls *.jar | sort -t- -k2 -V -r | head -1

I'm specifying the separator and set of keys to sort on. And use pipe to find the latest JAR with head command. You can assign this way:

LATEST_VERSION=$(ls foo*.jar | sort -t- -k2 -V -r | head -1)

And run the jar with any params you need.