How can I see a file's historical modification times?

Question

stat outputs a file's last modification time.
How can I see a list of all the times a file was modified?

For example, I'd like to edit a file 5 times, and see 5 modification times.

Solution

The system does not track that information. Every time the file is modified, the new modification time overwrites the previous one.

Depending on what exactly you need to do, various alternate solutions might apply, such as using a version control system, or having a daemon that watches for changes using inotify. But all of those solutions would rely on something else besides the modification time field as reported by stat.

Comments

[Dalvenjia]

I think you are looking for auditd security.blogoverflow.com/2013/01/…

[Владислав Щербин]

Or if you only need to watch a few files, inotifywait.