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AppleScript - Get the name of the only file in a folder?


The following AppleScript code gets the file that was added last,

tell application "Finder"
    set latestFile to item 1 of (sort (get files of (path to downloads folder)) by creation date) as alias
    set fileName to latestFile's name
end tell

Source: How to get the latest downloaded file name with applescript programatically?

But this fails if the folder has only one file. How to fix this?


Solution

  • The script is supposed to work with one file. But it throws an error if there is no file.

    You can ignore the error with a try block

    tell application "Finder"
        try
            set latestFile to item 1 of (sort (get document files of (path to downloads folder)) by creation date) as alias
            set fileName to latestFile's name
        end try
    end tell