LINUX TIPS AND TRICKS --- November 30, 2001
Published by ITworld.com -- changing the way you view IT
http://www.itworld.com/newsletters
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HIGHLIGHTS

* Certain applications must change a file's timestamp and Linux
supports two syscalls to handle the task.
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Modifying a File's Timestamps
By Danny Kalev

The struct stat contains the fields st_atime and st_mtime, among other
things. st_atime indicates the most recent access time of a file (read
how to retrieve a file's information into a struct stat and how to
interpret it here: http://www.itworld.com/nl/lnx_tip/07272001). This
value is updated whenever the file is opened or its inode is modified.
The st_mtime field contains the most recent modification time of a
file. It's updated whenever the file's data has changed.

Certain applications need to change these attributes. Tools such as tar
and cpio for instance reset the file's atime and mtime timestamps to
the values they had when the file was archived. User programs that
recover files from a backup set may also need to change the values of
these fields (note that the field st_ctime is automatically updated
whenever you change st_atime or st_mtime so you can use it to detect
unauthorized changes in a file's timestamps).

The utime() and utimes() Functions
Linux supports two syscalls that change the values of atime and mtime,
namely utime() and utimes(). utime() is defined by the POSIX standard
so, in general, you should prefer it to utimes(). utimes() has
historical significance: it was originally defined by BSD so you may
still find it in legacy code and in application ported from BSD. In
terms of functionality, they are both identical. They only differ in
their parameter lists and the locations of their prototypes.

The function utime() is declared in <utime.h> and has the following
prototype:

int utime(const char * pathname, struct utimbuf * buf);

Where struct utimbuf is defined as follows:

struct utimbuf {
time_t actime;
time_t modtime;
};

The utimes() function is declared in the <sys/time.h> header as follows:

int utimes(const char* pathname, struct timeval * tv);

Where struct timeval is defined as follows:

struct timeval {
long tv_sec;
long tv_usec;
};

The members tv_sec and usec contain the new values for atime and mtime,
respectively. As a special case, passing a NULL pointer as the second
argument of either function sets both fields to the current timestamp.
As always, the timestamps are represented as the number of seconds
elapsed since the Epoch.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

struct stat
http://itw.itworld.com/GoNow/a14724a47448a75963157a1

File Manipulation
http://itw.itworld.com/GoNow/a14724a47448a75963157a0

utime
http://itw.itworld.com/GoNow/a14724a47448a75963157a2

utime()
http://itw.itworld.com/GoNow/a14724a47448a75963157a3
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ITWORLD.COM NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE

Index of Linux Tips and Tricks
http://www.itworld.com/nl/lnx_tip/

Variadic Functions
http://www.itworld.com/nl/lnx_tip/02162001/

Even History
http://www.itworld.com/nl/lnx_tip/02232001/