[vox-tech] simple file command question

[Mike Simons]

On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 01:57:24PM -0400, Mike Simons wrote:
> On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 10:45:30AM -0700, Ehrhart, Jay wrote:
> > how do you use ll or ls to show the year the file was created?
> 
> ls -l --full-time

On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 10:53:20AM -0700, Henry House wrote:
> Unfortunately, you cannot because Unix filesystems do not record a creation
> time for files.

Hrmm, I read the original quest too quickly... I answered, the "year
file".   Henry's reply highlighted the "create time" component...

I second Henry's comment, creation time, is not stored... three times
are stored:
  atime - last access time (file was read)
  mtime - last modification time (file was written)
  ctime - change time (file attributes were change, like permissions)

Please use the "/usr/bin/stat" command to show these times... 
mtime or ctime _may_ provide what you want.

By default ls -l, will show mtime... add -c and you will get ctime,
instead.

For a file that was created and written once (very quickly), mtime and
ctime will be the same and match the creation time.  If a file is later
edited mtime will be updated to last change... ctime will still record
as close to "creation time" as is possible.  If someone does a chmod,
ctime will be updated (but not mtime).