10-29-2004
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
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LEARN ABOUT PHP
filectime
FILECTIME(3) 1 FILECTIME(3)
filectime - Gets inode change time of file
SYNOPSIS
int filectime (string $filename)
DESCRIPTION
Gets the inode change time of a file.
PARAMETERS
o $filename
- Path to the file.
RETURN VALUES
Returns the time the file was last changed, or FALSE on failure. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp.
EXAMPLES
Example #1
A filectime(3) example
<?php
// outputs e.g. somefile.txt was last changed: December 29 2002 22:16:23.
$filename = 'somefile.txt';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
echo "$filename was last changed: " . date("F d Y H:i:s.", filectime($filename));
}
?>
ERRORS
/EXCEPTIONS
Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.
NOTES
Note
Note: In most Unix filesystems, a file is considered changed when its inode data is changed; that is, when the permissions, owner,
group, or other metadata from the inode is updated. See also filemtime(3) (which is what you want to use when you want to create
"Last Modified" footers on web pages) and fileatime(3).
Note
Note also that in some Unix texts the ctime of a file is referred to as being the creation time of the file. This is wrong. There
is no creation time for Unix files in most Unix filesystems.
Note
Note that time resolution may differ from one file system to another.
Note
The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache(3) for more details.
Tip
As of PHP 5.0.0, this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to "Supported Protocols and Wrappers" to determine
which wrappers support stat(3) family of functionality.
SEE ALSO
filemtime(3).
PHP Documentation Group FILECTIME(3)