List files in a directory numerically

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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1

The company I work for uses SuSE for all of our back ends. As a lot of our servers are behind in updates and maintenance, I'm trying to speed a few things up.
One software that we use creates log files by an increasing number. Up until now I have been listing files by the last edited file in the directory and then looking at the head of the file.

cd /directory ; tail `ls -t | head -1`

A recent update to our systems this no longer works as things are written to one and then merged at a later point.

I can 

cd /directory ; ls -ltr | tail

then just open the highest numeric file but I'm looking to do this in one command as I will be scripting all checks in the future.

Thanks
Frag

2 
ls -v

or for single column

ls -1v

so

cd /directory && tail $(ls -v | tail -1)