How to find the most recent file in a directory using .NET, and without looping?

Expanding on the first one above, if you want to search for a certain pattern you may use the following code:

using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
...
string pattern = "*.txt";
var dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(directory);
var file = (from f in dirInfo.GetFiles(pattern) orderby f.LastWriteTime descending select f).First();

how about something like this...

var directory = new DirectoryInfo("C:\\MyDirectory");
var myFile = (from f in directory.GetFiles()
             orderby f.LastWriteTime descending
             select f).First();

// or...
var myFile = directory.GetFiles()
             .OrderByDescending(f => f.LastWriteTime)
             .First();

If you want to search recursively, you can use this beautiful piece of code:

public static FileInfo GetNewestFile(DirectoryInfo directory) {
   return directory.GetFiles()
       .Union(directory.GetDirectories().Select(d => GetNewestFile(d)))
       .OrderByDescending(f => (f == null ? DateTime.MinValue : f.LastWriteTime))
       .FirstOrDefault();                        
}

Just call it the following way:

FileInfo newestFile = GetNewestFile(new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\directory\"));

and that's it. Returns a FileInfo instance or null if the directory is empty.