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.

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.

REPORTING BUGS

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

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2017 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

       Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/touch>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) touch invocation'

GNU coreutils 8.28						   January 2018 							  TOUCH(1)