Re: file creation time

[Tod McQuillin <devin@example.com>]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Viktor Pavlenko wrote:

> how can I determine the file creation time?

Unix (and Linux) does not keep track of file creation times.  Only the
access time, modification time, and inode change time are maintained.

There is basically no guaranteed way to know when a file was first
created.

> The stat structure contains time of last access, time of last
> modification and time of last change. I thought that the latter is the
> inode change time but it gets updated when I just touch the file
> (inode remains the same).

Touching the file changes the inode, since touching the file will change
the file's modification time.  The modification time is stored in the
inode, so the inode change time is updated as well.
-- 
Tod McQuillin