Need improvement in the while loop in python program - python-2.7

Question

with some help of from this forum (#COLDSPEED...Thanks a lot )I have been able to read the latest file created in the directory. The program is looking for the max timestamp of file creation time. But I need two improvement
1.But what if 2 files are created in the same time stamp?
2.I want to skip the file which is already read(in case no new file arrives) when the while loop is checking for the latest file.
import os
import time
def detect_suspects(file_path, word_list):
with open(file_path) as LogFile:
Summary = {word: [] for word in word_list}
failure = ':'
for num, line in enumerate(LogFile, start=1):
for word in word_list:
if word in line:
failure += '<li>' + line + '</li>'
return failure
while True:
files = os.listdir('.')
latest_file = max(files, key=os.path.getmtime)
Error_Suspects = ['Error', 'ERROR', 'Failed', 'Failure']
print(latest_file)
Result = detect_suspects(latest_file, Error_Suspects)
print (Result)
time.sleep(5)

Answer 1

To address your first question, when 2 files have the exact same timestamp, max picks one and returns it. The first string that appears in the list that is associated with the max modification time is returned.
For your second question, you could make a small addition to your existing code by keeping track of the previous file and previous modification time.
Error_Suspects = ['Error', 'ERROR', 'Failed', 'Failure']
prev_file = None
prev_mtime = None
while True:
files = os.listdir('.')
latest_file = max(files, key=os.path.getmtime)
if latest_file != prev_file or (latest_file == prev_file and prev_mtime != os.path.getmtime(latest_file):
Result = detect_suspects(latest_file, Error_Suspects)
prev_file = latest_file
prev_mtime = os.path.getmtime(latest_file)
time.sleep(5)
In this code, the if condition will execute your code only if 1) your new file is different from your old file, or 2) your old and new file is the same but it was modified since the last time.