Md5sum the last 5 files in a folder 

find /directory1/directory2/ -maxdepth 1 -type f | sort | tail -n 5 | xargs md5sum

August 21, 2013 — openiduser113

Explanation

  • find lists the files, no recursion, no directories, with full path
  • sort list files alphabetically
  • tail keep only the last 5 files
  • xargs send the list as arguments to md5sum
  • md5sum calculate the md5sum for each file

Limitations

Probably can't handle spaces in file or directory names.

file-management hashing
sort tail find xargs md5sum