Question

I’m trying to create a dashboard which can show the oldest files in a directory, files with maximum size and both old and max size. I need a python script which can find out files recursively in all possible directories under my root directory which are oldest and have maximum size. Is it possible to do this via python or you need to write a shell script/awk for this?

Answer 1

To recursively check directories use os.walk().

Use os.path.getsize() to get size of a file, os.path.getmtime() to get it’s modification time.

import os
from os.path import join, getsize, getmtime

oldest_file, oldest_file_mtime = None, 9999999999
largest_file, largest_file_size = None, 0

for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/your/root'):
    for name in files:
        a_file = join(root, name)
        if getmtime(a_file) < oldest_file_mtime:
            oldest_file_mtime = getmtime(a_file)
            oldest_file = a_file
        if getsize(a_file) > largest_file_size:
            largest_file_size = getsize(a_file)
            largest_file = a_file

print "oldest file is: ", oldest_file
print "largest file is: ", largest_file