4

I'm trying to clear out how the timestamps of a file on linux work.

In this answer is stated:

Modify - the last time the file was modified (content has been modified)

Change - the last time meta data of the file was changed (e.g. permissions)

but every time I change the file contents the ctime is also altered. It leads to me to think that it's like a change reaction:

  1. The change in file contents triggers a change in mtime
  2. The change in mtime (file metadata) triggers a change in ctime

If that's true, then ctime will allways be >= than mtime.

Is this assumption correct on every situation? (assuming the system time is never altered manually)

Community
  • 1
mxlian
  • 223

1 Answers1

5

No: you can set mtime (modification time) and atime (access time) to arbitrary timestamps (within the limits of the time_t data type, including dates in the future. After doing this, ctime will be the current time.

The utimes function (which updates mtime and atime) accepts a pair of timeval structures, which combine time_t (seconds) and and microseconds, potentially increasing the resolution, but not limited to times in the past.

Thomas Dickey
  • 76,765