Best way to list files in Java, sorted by Date Mod

Question

I want to get a list of files in a directory, but I want to sort it such that the oldest files are first. My solution was to call File.listFiles and just resort the list based on File.lastModified, but I was wondering if there was a better way.

Edit: My current solution, as suggested, is to use an anonymous Comparator:

File[] files = directory.listFiles();

Arrays.sort(files, new Comparator<File>(){
    public int compare(File f1, File f2)
    {
        return Long.valueOf(f1.lastModified()).compareTo(f2.lastModified());
    } });

Answer 1

This might be faster if you have many files. This uses the decorate-sort-undecorate pattern so that the last-modified date of each file is fetched only once rather than every time the sort algorithm compares two files. This potentially reduces the number of I/O calls from O(n log n) to O(n).

It's more code, though, so this should only be used if you're mainly concerned with speed and it is measurably faster in practice (which I haven't checked).

class Pair implements Comparable {
    public long t;
    public File f;

    public Pair(File file) {
        f = file;
        t = file.lastModified();
    }

    public int compareTo(Object o) {
        long u = ((Pair) o).t;
        return t < u ? -1 : t == u ? 0 : 1;
    }
};

// Obtain the array of (file, timestamp) pairs.
File[] files = directory.listFiles();
Pair[] pairs = new Pair[files.length];
for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++)
    pairs[i] = new Pair(files[i]);

// Sort them by timestamp.
Arrays.sort(pairs);

// Take the sorted pairs and extract only the file part, discarding the timestamp.
for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++)
    files[i] = pairs[i].f;

Answer 2

public String[] getDirectoryList(String path) {
    String[] dirListing = null;
    File dir = new File(path);
    dirListing = dir.list();

    Arrays.sort(dirListing, 0, dirListing.length);
    return dirListing;
}

Answer 3

There is a very easy and convenient way to handle the problem without any extra comparator. Just code the modified date into the String with the filename, sort it, and later strip it off again.

Use a String of fixed length 20, put the modified date (long) into it, and fill up with leading zeros. Then just append the filename to this string:

String modified_20_digits = ("00000000000000000000".concat(Long.toString(temp.lastModified()))).substring(Long.toString(temp.lastModified()).length()); 

result_filenames.add(modified_20_digits+temp.getAbsoluteFile().toString());

What happens is this here:

Filename1: C:\data\file1.html Last Modified:1532914451455 Last Modified 20 Digits:00000001532914451455

Filename1: C:\data\file2.html Last Modified:1532918086822 Last Modified 20 Digits:00000001532918086822

transforms filnames to:

Filename1: 00000001532914451455C:\data\file1.html

Filename2: 00000001532918086822C:\data\file2.html

You can then just sort this list.

All you need to do is to strip the 20 characters again later (in Java 8, you can strip it for the whole Array with just one line using the .replaceAll function)

Answer 4

There is also a completely different way which may be even easier, as we do not deal with large numbers.

Instead of sorting the whole array after you retrieved all filenames and lastModified dates, you can just insert every single filename just after you retrieved it at the right position of the list.

You can do it like this:

list.add(1, object1)
list.add(2, object3)
list.add(2, object2)

After you add object2 to position 2, it will move object3 to position 3.

Answer 5

Imports :

org.apache.commons.io.comparator.LastModifiedFileComparator

Apache Commons

Code :

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File directory = new File(".");
        // get just files, not directories
        File[] files = directory.listFiles((FileFilter) FileFileFilter.FILE);

        System.out.println("Default order");
        displayFiles(files);

        Arrays.sort(files, LastModifiedFileComparator.LASTMODIFIED_COMPARATOR);
        System.out.println("\nLast Modified Ascending Order (LASTMODIFIED_COMPARATOR)");
        displayFiles(files);

        Arrays.sort(files, LastModifiedFileComparator.LASTMODIFIED_REVERSE);
        System.out.println("\nLast Modified Descending Order (LASTMODIFIED_REVERSE)");
        displayFiles(files);

    }

Answer 6

Collections.sort(listFiles, new Comparator<File>() {
        public int compare(File f1, File f2) {
            return Long.compare(f1.lastModified(), f2.lastModified());
        }
    });

where listFiles is the collection of all files in ArrayList