How to check a folder timestamp?

Question

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.

Solution

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.

Comments

[Admin]

You can follow this link

[noleti]

But ctime is apparently not easy to find out, depending on the filesystem: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/20460/…

[chaos]

@noleti why not easy? use stat filename.