Question

I’m writing a script that gets the most recently modified file from a unix directory.
I’m certain it works, but I have to create a unittest to prove it.

The problem is the setUp function. I want to be able to predict the order the files are created in.

self.filenames = ["test1.txt", "test2.txt", "test3.txt", "filename.txt", "test4"]
newest = ''
for fn in self.filenames:
    if pattern.match(fn): newest = fn
    with open(fn, "w") as f: f.write("some text")

The pattern is “test.*.txt” so it just matches the first three in the list. In multiple tests, newest sometimes returns ‘test3.txt’ and sometimes ‘test1.txt’.

Answer 1

Use os.utime to explicitly set modified time on the files that you have created. That way your test will run faster.