Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 19:46:37 -0500 From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: file creation date in freebsd Message-ID: <20060618004637.GH74191@dan.emsphone.com> In-Reply-To: <20060617192003.7897dc71.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> References: <200606172144.k5HLipM6078421@darkstar.thelakecity.com.pk> <20060617192003.7897dc71.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
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In the last episode (Jun 17), Bill Moran said: > Imran Imtiaz <imran@darkstar.thelakecity.com.pk> wrote: > > However we can find the modification date of a file but is it > > possible that we can also get creation date of the file? > > There is nothing in the filesystem that stores this info. > > However, the ctime is often used for this purpose. The ctime stores > the last time the file metadata was changed (such as permissions and > ownership). Since it's uncommon for people to change the file > metadata, the ctime can be a good indicator of when the file was > created, but it's no guarantee. Actually, there is if you are using UFS2. The stat field is called the st_birthtime, although the code to print it via ls (with -U) was just committed recently and isn't available in 6.1. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com
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