What behavior would you expect?

[Jason Friedman]

I have need to search a directory and return the name of the most recent
file matching a given pattern.  Given a directory with these files and
timestamps,

>
> q.pattern1.abc Feb 13
> r.pattern1.cdf  Feb 12
> s.pattern1.efg  Feb 10
> t.pattern2.abc Feb 13
> u.pattern2.xyz  Feb 14
> v.pattern2.efg  Feb 10
>
> calling my_function("/path/to/dir", "pattern1") will return q.pattern1.abc
> and calling my_function("/path/to/dir", "pattern2") will return
> u.pattern2.xyz.
>
> My question is, what would be a reasonable behavior/result/return value if:
> 1. "/path/to/dir" does not exist or is not readable
> 2. no files match the given pattern
>
> Also, what would be a reasonable name for such a function?
>

Thank you everyone.  Taking bits of advice from each of you I tentatively
have:

import glob
import os

def order_matching_files(a_path, a_glob="*"):
    """Search a path for files whose names match a_glob
    and return a list of the full path to such files, in descending
    order of modification time. Ignore directories."""
    previous_dir = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(a_path)
    return_list = [os.path.join(a_path, x) for x in glob.glob(a_glob) if
os.path.isfile(x)]
    os.chdir(previous_dir)
    return reversed(sorted(return_list, key=os.path.getmtime))

It's a shame that glob.glob does not take an arbitrary directory as an
optional argument if one does not want to scan the current directory.
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