[OpenIndiana-discuss] using touch ... whats wrong here

[Doug Hughes]

That is the classical answer for ctime. James is correct. However some may find it interesting to note that GPFS does indeed keep the original creation time as an additional attribute that can then be used for policy applications. It is not exposed to Unix, but it's there. Alas, GPFS is only available on AIX and Linux at this time.

(misc morning info share)

Sent from my android device.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Carlson <carlsonj at workingcode.com>
To: openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
Sent: Thu, 03 Dec 2015 8:24
Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] using touch ... whats wrong here

On 12/03/15 04:56, Peter Tribble wrote:
> You're mixing the various timestamps.

Indeed; that's the problem.

> access, shown by ls -lu
> modify (of data), shown by ls -l
> creation (or modify metadata), shown by ls -lc

Perhaps a nit, but one I think is important.  UNIX (including
OpenIndiana) does not keep track of file or directory "creation" time.
The 'ctime' element tracks the last attribute change time.  There's no
way (in UNIX) of knowing when a file was created.

And, yes, the OP should be using the file's mtime (the "-newer" option).
 The attribute change time is rarely what you want.  :-/

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj at workingcode.com>

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