Bash Environment Variable

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I want to define a permanent environment variable to view the last text file in a folder. I added this line in .bashrc file:

export DUMMY="less foldername/`ls foldername/ | tail -n 1`"

The folder is like this:

foldername/
|_ file1
|_ file2
|_ file3
|_ file4
...

The problem is, whenever I use $DUMMY, it opens always the same file (e.g. file3) which is one of the last ones but not very recent one and it is not changing. What is my mistake?

Thank you

1 Answers

Wouldn't an alias be better for this case?

alias dummy="less foldername/`ls -tr foldername/ | tail -n 1`"

Then you can use:

dummy

Alias vs export

I add -tr options to ls:
-t - sort by time & date
-r - list in reverse order

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