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How to get file information inherent to time: such as last modification time, recent access time and so on.

Also I would like to know if it is possible to check all the modification dates of a file or the times the file was modified and when. Thanks.

Pleo
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  • You can follow this [link](http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-finding-files-by-date/) –  Jul 18 '14 at 07:47

1 Answers1

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Most Unix/Linux operating systems know 3 different meta informations for a file or a folder: atime, mtime and ctime.

  • atime: access time: means when the file/folder was last accessed.
  • mtime: modify time: defines when the content of the file was last changed. Will be set when the file was created and evertime when the content changes. For a folder, mtime changes when a file is created or deleted inside of it.
  • ctime: change time (not create time!): Changes when the content of the file changes (like mtime) and also when metadata changes. That means when the owner or the permissions change.
chaos
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    But ctime is apparently not easy to find out, depending on the filesystem: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/20460/how-do-i-do-a-ls-and-then-sort-the-results-by-date-created – noleti Jul 18 '14 at 07:26
  • @noleti why not easy? use `stat filename`. – chaos Jul 18 '14 at 09:15