Enter the newest subdirectory.

My various side-project folders contain tens of side projects that are yet to succeed. And I’m only ever really interested in the latest one (hehe). So instead of remembering its name, I want to change directories right into it.

That’s precisely what this bash function does:

cdl() {
    # Change Directory to Latest
    local latest_dir=$(ls -td -- */ | head -n 1)
    if [[ -d "$latest_dir" ]]; then
        cd "$latest_dir"
    else
        echo "No directories found!"
    fi
}

Breakdown

• ls -t orders the ls entries by the modified time - which is precisely what we want.
• ls -d prevents the ls from searching the directories recursively. They are listed as plain files, nothing special about them now.
• */ is actually important. With only the asterisk wildcard *, files are included in the ls output too. Adding the slash / limits the ls to directories - but thanks to the previous modifier, ls doesn’t descend into them

I just put this function in my .aliases file, sourced in .zshrc - usual stuff.