Programming

i am just checking the access times of files in C, but i am unsure about something

say i have a c program called acc.c (only file in directory)
then i compile it and get acc
then i ran acc and it tells me all the files in the current directory thats access time is only later than acc.c
for some reason acc pops up? is this right? i didnt open acc....just compiled it and ran it...

Yes.

access time means the time it was last read, executed, or written. You have to open and execute compiled image file in order to run it.

i just noticed, acc is not supposed to come up, because after you run acc, it gets the access times of acc.c so acc.c gets accessed , so really acc is not supposed to come up right?

Without seeing the source code for your application and without seeing how you ran the resulting executable I have no idea what it's actually doing and what it should be doing.

i ran the program like so
clear
dos2unix acc.c acc.c
gcc -Wall -g -o acc acc.c.
touch .test
./acc -b acc.c (this makes it only check for modification time)
./acc acc.c (this only checks for access time)


for the last result, i think i am supposed to get only .test, but for some reason i get .test and acc

so if i run the code to get the access time, i will get the access time , then update that files access time?

You still haven't posted the source code of the program so I can't tell what it's supposed to be doing and why it's not.

You haven't posted what it actually printed, either.

Code:

$ cat file.c
sourc code of program
$ ./stuffItyped
stuffitprints
$ ./nextthingItyped
stuffthatprinted

Until service gets back to me about my crystal ball, these are the things to tell what you're actually doing and how it's not working.