Some Elisp for getting the last modified date of files and comparing two files. The original idea was to use this for comparing whether a tangled .el file from org-babel was as new as the source .org file, but it turns out org-babel-load-file already does this!

misc-file.el

(defun get-last-modifed (file)
  "Returns the last modified date of a FILE."
  (interactive)
  (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d %T"
                      (nth 5 (file-attributes file))))

(defun most-recent-p (file1 file2)
  "Returns t if FILE1 was modified more recently than FILE2."
  (string< (get-last-modifed file1) (get-last-modifed file2)))