This ones a hard one. Since "--version-sort" isn't standard anyways, lets assume we can use flags which are common to BSD and GNU. Furthermore, lets assume bash or zsh so we can use "read -d ''".

In that case, how about:

  IFS='' read -d '' latest < <(find $pattern -prune -print0 | sort -z --reverse --version-sort)

This should work with any arbitrary filename:

    latest=$(printf '%s\0' <glob> | sort -zrV | head -zn1)

or with long args:

    latest=$(printf '%s\0' <glob> | sort --zero-terminated --reverse --version-sort | head --zero-terminated --lines 1

What unix is this on? Neither the mac nor gnu manpages have a -z or --zero-terminated option for head.

Debian's head (from GNU coreutils) does: https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/coreutils/head.1.en.htm...

Yay! Glad to see zero termination flags in more places.

EDIT: The linux manpages I read were from die.net, which it looks like were from 2010, guess I'll have to avoid them in the future. I checked FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac man page to make sure, and unfortunately none of them support the -z flag yet.