i have a slight problem and would appreciate if someone could clarify the confusion.. i use find alot and so far i have done ok.. but it just struck me a couple of days ago that I am not quite sure what the difference between the modification time and the change time as in ctime and mtime and especially cnewer and newer.. as far as I can see I have tried to stat some of my files and most of the time all three access change and modification are the same.. no clues as to the differences from the man pages... which talks about modifcation and change isn't that the same.
any examples clues or feedback welcome
thanx moxx68

ctime refers to changes made to the file's inode (such as changing permissions, etc). mtime refers to changes to the data within the file. So cnewer will use a reference files inode change time for the comparision, whereas newer will use a reference files data modification time.

Some manual pages are very vague and don't make a clear distinction, so your confusion is understandable!

FYI, there's also atime, which refers to file access time. Also, there is, unfortunately (and to the best of my knowledge), no way of finding file creation time through an inode.

Cheers
ZB

See this thread.

thank you for your input
moxxx68