Thank you for this info. It seems fairly clear that if I want a creation date, I'll have to write it myself somewhere. (Just wish I'd thought of it BEFORE I created the files :-)

My fundamental question is now answered but I am still curious... what on earth is -C for?

The -C is the operator for the ctime stat field. They (-C and ctime) both mean the file's (inode) change time. I can't explain it any further. Perhaps one of the other monks?

what on earth is -C for?

"The field st_ctime is changed by writing or by setting inode information (i.e., owner, group, link count, mode, etc.)." -- stat(2)

Next time, maybe you should try Google first.

- Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.

The touch utility has a good explanation:

Although touch provides options for changing two of the times -- the times of last access and modification -- of a file, there is actually a third one as well: the inode change time. This is often referred to as a file's ctime. The inode change time represents the time when the file's meta-information last changed. One common example of this is when the permissions of a file change. Changing the permissions doesn't access the file, so the atime doesn't change, nor does it modify the file, so the mtime doesn't change. Yet, something about the file itself has changed, and this must be noted somewhere. This is the job of the ctime field. This is necessary, so that, for example, a backup program can make a fresh copy of the file, including the new permissions value. Another operation that modifies a file's ctime without affecting the others is renaming. In any case, it is not possible, in normal operations, for a user to change the ctime field to a user-specified value.

Hope that helps.