From: Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@...>
Date: 2008-01-05T21:19:57+09:00
Subject: Re: A file's creation date

Peter L Versteegen <pversteegen@gcnetmail.net> writes:

> [Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
>
> Hello anyone,
>
> I have written a script that organizes my ten thousand+  photos into a  
> year/month file structure using 'exifr' while eliminating duplicates.   
> Unfortunately some of the dates in the 'EXIF' block are bad or non  
> existing.  In the latter case, the file's creation date is the closest  
> I can come to as a date to use for the photograph, and even that is  
> sometimes flawed.  However, I cannot find a method for retrieving the  
> creation date of a file.  The file class has 'atime', last access  
> time, and 'ctime', lst changed time.  I have googled and googled but  
> can't find a way.  Can anyone help?
>
> Thanks ahead of time.

Think ahead of time.  I mean, if you want to keep the creation time,
you have to think of it when you create the file, because the unix
systems won't do that for you.  

For example, just before downloading your pictures, you could create a
directory named with the time stamp:

d=pictures-$(date +%Y%m%d) ; mkdir $d ; cd $d ; fetch-pictures-from-camera

you can also use:
d=pictures-$(date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S)
if you do that several times the same day.


There are also programs to edit the EXIF block, perhaps you could use
one to add the creation data in the files?

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