How do I check the creation time of a file

[Tison]

I need to check if a file was updated in the last 2 hours (NOT DAYS).
find -atime +2 does not work for me.
Any ideas ?

 

[MikeLacey]

Hi Tison,

Looks like -atime and -mtime both require decimal integers so you can't check for this with the find command.

Your way forward seems to be to write a script that does the same checking job as find but checks for hours or minutes rather than days.

What scripting languages do you have available? Perl would be the easiest I think.

Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com

 

[ElgisRamon]

No unix system stores the creation time of files... you can check the access date, modification date or modification date of i-node... ONLY

 

[Guest_imported]

infact -a and -mtime parameters take the integer value multiplied by 24 hours.so probably you have to write a
script for your specified purpose.

 

[MikeLacey]

Elgis,

At the risk of sounding stupid here, I thought the inode date *was* the file creation date; how can it not be? My understanding was that an inode is only modified when a file is created or deleted.
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com

 

[ElgisRamon]

The i-node of a file stores the owner, group, dates, sizes, and permissions... then if you change ANY of that attributes then you will be changing that i-node!

 

[MikeLacey]

Ok, thx Elgis
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com