From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-08-17T06:54:26+09:00
Subject: Re: How do I get the creation date of a file?

On Thu, 17 Aug 2006, Chad Perrin wrote:

> That is, effectively, creation time (for a particular definition of file
> creation).  It returns the time at which the file's listing in the
> information for the enclosing directory changed, which basically means when
> it was created within that directory.  Same difference.  I do think the
> letter C stands for "change" in this case, though, not only in Ruby docs,
> but in POSIX standards as well.

man 2 stat

...
        The  field  st_ctime is changed by writing or by setting inode informa-
        tion (i.e., owner, group, link count, mode, etc.).
...


it's change time and this isn't even really close to creation time for __any__
definition since operations like chmod, chowner, chgrp or linking to the file
all effect this timestamp.  for example

     harp:~ > touch foobar

     harp:~ > stat foobar
       File: `foobar'
       Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   Directory
     Device: 306h/774d       Inode: 278848      Links: 2
     Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x)  Uid: (  447/ ahoward)   Gid: (  447/ ahoward)
     Access: 2006-08-16 15:49:58.000000000 -0600
     Modify: 2006-08-16 15:49:58.000000000 -0600
     Change: 2006-08-16 15:49:58.000000000 -0600



     harp:~ > ln -s foobar barfoo

     harp:~ > stat foobar
       File: `foobar'
       Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   Directory
     Device: 306h/774d       Inode: 278848      Links: 2
     Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x)  Uid: (  447/ ahoward)   Gid: (  447/ ahoward)
     Access: 2006-08-16 15:49:58.000000000 -0600
     Modify: 2006-08-16 15:50:20.000000000 -0600
     Change: 2006-08-16 15:50:20.000000000 -0600


i can't even begin to tell you how many legacy perl scripts i've found with
this logic error in them - it's a really hard one to track down.

in any case it's a simple thing to read about so i'm not sure why it causes so
much confusion... there simply is no concept of file creation time in unix.

btw.  my dirwatch directory event code works around this to a large degree for
certain situations.

regards.

-a
-- 
to foster inner awareness, introspection, and reasoning is more efficient than
meditation and prayer.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama