How can I sort a directory by creation date in BASH?

Question

I'm trying to create a simple script to list the 16 most recent folders created in a directory on my nas machine as a way to display the most recent movies added to my collection.

the script i am using at the moment is:

#!/bin/bash
rm -f /volume1/new-movies/*
IFS=$'\x0A'
fresh=$(ls -1ct /volume1/movies | head -16)
for folder in $fresh
do
    file=$(find "/volume1/movies/$folder" -maxdepth 1 -type f)
    movie=$(basename "$file")
    ln -s "$file" "/volume1/new-movies/$movie"
done
ls -1 /volume1/new-movies

which is OK (the movies folder will only ever contain folders). My problem is this is sorted by the file/folders modification time rather than the creation time.

the filesystem is ext4 and should support a birth time but i have had no luck accessing it.

scott@pandora scripts $ stat  /volume1/movies/example/
  File: '/volume1/movies/example/'
  Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 902h/2306d      Inode: 373800961   Links: 2
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: ( 1028/   scott)   Gid: (  100/   users)
Access: 2013-04-09 13:39:53.243991684 +1000
Modify: 2013-04-06 13:26:00.965998952 +1100
Change: 2013-04-09 11:46:23.280991727 +1000
 Birth: -

however, samba seems to have no issue displaying the correct creation date/time. is there a way to access the same information from bash? or am i going to have to program something in python/other to do what i need by accessing smb directly and listing each folder with the creation date?

scott@pandora scripts $ smbclient \\\\localhost\\movies\\
Enter scott's password:
Domain=[EXAMPLENET] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.6.9]
smb: \> allinfo "example"
altname: E06KNE~A
create_time:    Fri Jun 18 17:23:49 2010 EST
access_time:    Tue Apr  9 13:39:53 2013 EST
write_time:     Sat Apr  6 13:26:01 2013 EST
change_time:    Sat Apr  6 13:26:01 2013 EST
attributes: DA (30)
smb: \> quit

edit: see my below answer for my final solution to this issue.

Answer 1

After some fiddling I have come up with a solution which appears to work a little better than trying to rely on ls -lc. here's the full script i am now using.

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# remove the existing symbolic links-
rm -f /volume1/new-movies/*

# retrieve the folder listing from the smbclient (the date used is 'modified'
# which appears closer to 'creation' than anything else)
folders=$(smbclient \\\\localhost\\movies -N -c ls 2>/dev/null)

# format the output for better sorting. eg
# folder DA 0 Mon  2 Oct 12:23:00 2012
# 2012-Oct-2 12:23:00 "folder"
fmt1=$(echo "$folders" | sed -E 's/^  (.*\))\s+DA.* (\w+)\s+([0-9]{1,2})\s+([0-9:]{8})\s+([0-9]{4})$/\5-\2-\3 \4 "\1"/')

# change the month names to numeric representations and pad single digit
# dates to 2 characters. eg.
# 2012-Oct-2 12:23:00 "folder"
# 2012-10-02 12:23:00 "folder"
fmt2=$(echo -e "$fmt1" |sed 's/-Jan-/-01-/;s/-Feb-/-02-/;s/-Mar-/-03-/;s/-Apr-/-04-/;s/-May-/-05-/;s/-Jun-/-06-/;s/-Jul-/-07-/;s/-Aug-/-08-/;s/-Sep-/-09-/;s/-Oct-/-10-/;s/-Nov-/-11-/;s/-Dec-/-12-/;s/-\([0-9]\) /-0\1 /')

# sort the folders in reverse order
sortd=$(echo -e "$fmt2" | sort -r)

# grab the last 16. (16 items per page are displayed on the wd tv streaming)
latest=$(echo -e "$sortd" | head -16 | cut -d\" -f2)

# loop through each folder using new line rather than dft. space
IFS=$'\x0A'
for l in $latest
do
   # find the movie file in the directory, dont look in subdirectories and
   # only match movie files. skips subtitles, bonus features, etc.
   f=$(find "/volume1/movies/$l" -maxdepth 1 -type f \
   \( -iname \*.avi -o \
      -iname \*.mp4 -o \
      -iname \*.mkv -o \
      -iname \*.mpg -o \
      -iname \*.ts -o \
      -iname \*.m4v \
   \) -exec echo "{}" \;)

   # grab just the filename
   b=$(basename "$f")

   # link the file $f to the new movie folder with just the base name.
   ln -s "$f" "/volume1/new-movies/$b"

done
IFS=
ls -1 /volume1/new-movies

Answer 2

Linux file systems never used to support file creation time, but apparently ext4 does. It's not integrated very conveniently in the standard tools like ls and stat, but you can do this as root:

debugfs -R 'stat /full/path/to/my/file.txt' /dev/sda1

where sda1 is the device your filesystem is on