From: Justin Collins <collinsj@...>
Date: 2006-08-17T07:07:06+09:00
Subject: Re: How do I get the creation date of a file?



ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
> 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
> <snip>

Not to mention, on my Linux machine, just opening up a file and saving 
it changes all the times (access, modify, and change) to the same time. 
I'm sure that varies by OS, though.

-Justin