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Can the timestamp of a soft link be changed?

 
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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Can the timestamp of a soft link be changed?
# 1  
Old 08-18-2008
Can the timestamp of a soft link be changed?
I was wondering if it was at all possible to change the timestamp of a soft link. I want to change it to a time in the past before it was created.

Sceanrio:

In a directory i have a number of softlinks whih point to files, a script processes these files oldest first bassed on the time the softlink was created.

If for example i wanted a certain file to be processed next i would need a way to make the timestamp of the softlink the oldest in the DIR. At the moment the only way i can do this is to remake all the soft links apart from the file i want processed next so all the others have a new timestamp.

This is not ever convient as it then means the remaing files all have the same timestamp and no longer have an order.


I was wondering if there is a way i can update the time of the soft link to make it the oldest in the DIR?

any ideas?
# 2  
Old 08-18-2008
try touch command go through touch man page
# 3  
Old 08-18-2008
Using Touch only updates the timestamp of the source file. i need to update the time of the soft link.
# 4  
Old 08-18-2008
Remove and then recreate the symlink.
# 5  
Old 08-18-2008
On FreeBSD, touch also support 'touching' the link:

man page:
Quote:
-h If the file is a symbolic link, change the times of the link
itself rather than the file that the link points to. Note that
-h implies -c and thus will not create any new files.
# 6  
Old 08-18-2008
Unfortunatly touch on my box does not have a -h option. thanks for the info though. Anyone else got any other ideas?
# 7  
Old 08-19-2008
Perderabo named the way to do it - for example, in C or perl call unlink() then symlink()
 
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