Get latest file from a directory using psftp

Question

There are many files in a directory on a server which are generated by a process. How to get latest file (order by date descending) that is generated using psftp?

Answer 1

The psftp does not have such feature.

You would have to:

• Run psftp once with ls command and output it to a file
• Parse the output using some scripting language, to find the latest file.
• Generate ad-hoc download script for the selected file for a second psftp run.

---

Instead, you can use WinSCP scripting and its get -latest command instead.

Example batch file (.bat):

winscp.com /log=download.log /ini=nul /command ^
    "open sftp://username:[e-mail] -hostkey=""...""" ^
    "get -latest /remote/path/* C:\local\path\" ^
    "exit"

There's a guide for Converting PuTTY PSFTP script to WinSCP script.

Or even easier, you can have WinSCP GUI generate the script/batch file for you. All you need to do manually is to add the -latest switch.

(I'm the author of WinSCP)