11-29-2011
Ctime is the time that a file/directory's status was last changed. It is likely that the process you mention is working in the directory, and then resetting the access time of the directory to what it was prior to the examination. The intent is to be an invisible access so that if you the user run a find command with the -atime option, accesses by maintenance programmes such as this will not factor into the search. However, adjusting the access time (or the mod time) on a file/directory causes the state to change and thus is recorded in the ctime timestamp, and you end up with what you are seeing.
This is a guess; I'm not at all familiar with tmpwatch and its behaviour.
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TOUCH(3) 1 TOUCH(3)
touch - Sets access and modification time of file
SYNOPSIS
bool touch (string $filename, [int $time = time()], [int $atime])
DESCRIPTION
Attempts to set the access and modification times of the file named in the $filename parameter to the value given in $time. Note that the
access time is always modified, regardless of the number of parameters.
If the file does not exist, it will be created.
PARAMETERS
o $filename
- The name of the file being touched.
o $time
- The touch time. If $time is not supplied, the current system time is used.
o $atime
- If present, the access time of the given filename is set to the value of $atime. Otherwise, it is set to the value passed to the
$time parameter. If neither are present, the current system time is used.
RETURN VALUES
Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.
CHANGELOG
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
|Version | |
| | |
| | Description |
| | |
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
| 5.3.0 | |
| | |
| | It became possible to change the modification |
| | time of a directory under Windows. |
| | |
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
EXAMPLES
Example #1
touch(3) example
<?php
if (touch($filename)) {
echo $filename . ' modification time has been changed to present time';
} else {
echo 'Sorry, could not change modification time of ' . $filename;
}
?>
Example #2
touch(3) using the $time parameter
<?php
// This is the touch time, we'll set it to one hour in the past.
$time = time() - 3600;
// Touch the file
if (!touch('some_file.txt', $time)) {
echo 'Whoops, something went wrong...';
} else {
echo 'Touched file with success';
}
?>
NOTES
Note
Note that time resolution may differ from one file system to another.
Warning
Prior to PHP 5.3.0 it was not possible to change the modification time of a directory with this function under Windows.
PHP Documentation Group TOUCH(3)