ls command error via SFTP in Linux shell script

Question

i have the next code:

files=$(lftp -u mgtwrk35,Unix11! sftp://illin634<<EOF
cd some_dir
ls | tail -1
EOF)

why does the code above work, but if i add to the ls function -tr like:

ls -tr | tail -1

it doesn't work and gives me the next message:

ls: invalid option -- t
ls: invalid option -- r

Thanks in advance for the answer

Answer 1

The ls in lftp is not the real thing. It's also named "ls" but does not support all the parameters you can find in the standard ls.

• find lets you recursively list files.
• cls --sort=date lets you sort by modification date.

I don't know how to combine the two. There's a work-around mentioned by Nicolas Noble, which is to use awk to post-process the result of find.