Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Searching by file timestamp

Unix/Linux filesystems have three types of timestamp on each file. They are as follows:

• Access time (-atime): The timestamp when the file was last accessed
• Modification time (-mtime): The timestamp when the file was last modified
• Change time (-ctime): The timestamp when the metadata for a file (such as permissions or ownership) was last modified

Unix does not store file creation time by default; however, some filesystems (ufs2, ext4, zfs, btrfs, jfs) save the creation time. The creation time can be accessed with the stat command. Given that some applications modify a file by creating a new file and then deleting the original, the creation date may not be accurate. The -atime, -mtime, and -ctime option are the ...