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Full Discussion: mtime vs ctime
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers mtime vs ctime Post 57480 by zazzybob on Friday 29th of October 2004 06:02:12 AM
Old 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 OSX

clri

CLRI(8) 						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						   CLRI(8)

NAME

     clri -- clear an inode

SYNOPSIS

     clri special_device inode_number ...

DESCRIPTION

     Clri is obsoleted for normal file system repair work by fsck(8).

     Clri zeros out the inodes with the specified inode number(s) on the filesystem residing on the given special_device.  The fsck(8) utility is
     usually run after clri to reclaim the zero'ed inode(s) and the blocks previously claimed by those inode(s).  Both read and write permission
     are required on the specified special_device.

     The primary purpose of this routine is to remove a file which for some reason is not being properly handled by fsck(8).  Once removed, it is
     anticipated that fsck(8) will be able to clean up the resulting mess.

SEE ALSO

     fsck(8), fsdb(8), icheck(8), ncheck(8)

BUGS

     If the file is open, the work of clri will be lost when the inode is written back to disk from the inode cache.

4th Berkeley Distribution					  April 19, 1994					 4th Berkeley Distribution
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