Script to copy creation date over top of modified date? Post: 302970969

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Script to copy creation date over top of modified date? Post 302970969 by bakunin on Thursday 14th of April 2016 07:52:23 AM

04-14-2016

Registered User

Quote:

Originally Posted by toysareforboys

I know how to touch every file recursively, but no idea how to read a files creation date then use that to touch the modification date of that file

OK, one problem after the other:

1) How to get the creation date
Use the command istat. For details see man istat.

2) How to set the date of a file
Use touch -t <time>. See the man page of touch for details.

3) How to circle through a set of files
Use the find-command. Basically, find starts at some "starting point" directory and works its way recursively from there, finding every filesystem entry there is. You can exclude (or include) certain files and/or directories, so that only a part of the whole set is produced. Once the set is what you want you can add a certain action to each item found that way by adding the "-exec"-clause. Here is an example:

Code:

find /some/dir -type f -name "AB*" -exec cp {} /other/place \;

This will start in "/some/dir", only include files ("-type f") in the result set, further restrict the result set only to names beginning with "AB" ("-name "AB*") and finally execute the command cp {} /other/place for each file found that way. The "{}" is a placeholder for the respective filename found that way which will be filled in by the find-command.

For details: again, see the man-page.

4) How to change the date from one format to another
You haven't told us which system you are on. If you have the date-utility from GNU: it can do that. If not: you will need to get one of the many solutions already published. Search the forum (or even the internet) for "date calculation" or something such and you will find a myriad of hits.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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touch

TOUCH(1)							   User Commands							  TOUCH(1)

NAME

       touch - change file timestamps

SYNOPSIS

       touch [OPTION]... FILE...

DESCRIPTION

       Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time.

       A FILE argument that does not exist is created empty, unless -c or -h is supplied.

       A FILE argument string of - is handled specially and causes touch to change the times of the file associated with standard output.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -a     change only the access time

       -c, --no-create
	      do not create any files

       -d, --date=STRING
	      parse STRING and use it instead of current time

       -f     (ignored)

       -h, --no-dereference
	      affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the timestamps of a symlink)

       -m     change only the modification time

       -r, --reference=FILE
	      use this file's times instead of current time

       -t STAMP
	      use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time

       --time=WORD
	      change the specified time: WORD is access, atime, or use: equivalent to -a WORD is modify or mtime: equivalent to -m

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
	      output version information and exit

       Note that the -d and -t options accept different time-date formats.

       GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

DATE STRING

       The  --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
       even "next Thursday".  A date string may contain items indicating calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time,  rela-
       tive  date,  and numbers.  An empty string indicates the beginning of the day.  The date string format is more complex than is easily docu-
       mented here but is fully described in the info documentation.

AUTHOR

       Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

       The full documentation for touch is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and touch programs are properly installed  at  your  site,
       the command

	      info coreutils 'touch invocation'

       should give you access to the complete manual.

GNU coreutils 8.22						     June 2014								  TOUCH(1)