UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

The files themselves were not accessed (opened). I used finder to navigate to the folder then selected each file to see the details... is that changing the atime? That would mean folder access changes contained files access time...?

Reference post #1. You should be using "-mtime" which references the same timestamp as "ls -l".

As others imply, the "-atime" timestamp is rarely of any use because it can be changed by backup software or by the very action of searching.

Code:

$ find . -type f -mtime 20 -exec ls -ltr {} \;

Clearly, something did access them. You saw their atimes yourself, when you did ls -lu.

For the third time: finder is known to mess up atimes. It does it when it indexes the system, not just when you browse. If you want to use atimes, you'll have to tell finder not to index those files.

Your script is not finding those files because their atimes are very, very recent. YOu can see their atimes yourself in one of your own posts.

He states clearly in his OP that he's looking for the time a file was last read and not the time it was last modified.