[internetworkers] *nix timestamps

Jay Cuthrell jcuthrell at neonova.net
Sun Feb 1 18:18:54 EST 2004


> So AnyWay! ... does Unix record creation dates?  If so, how do I view the
> creation date for a given file or directory.  "ls" will give me the
> modification date, but I don't see anything in the man about creation
> dates.

Check this on your *nix system:

% man 2 stat

It is likely, the struct does -not- provide for the notion of creation date.
If you are using Linux with ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, etc... you don't get
anything other than the last time the inode changed.  The returned
value -might- be the creation date but that is likely a false assumption.

The notion of file creation time meta data is availble to
Mac(HFS)/Windows(NTFS) filesystems...

That said, you could always use a filesystem for Linux that supports the
notion of a creation time. i.e. CODA

-Jay




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