Changing file modification timestamp

monktim has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a multi-gigabyte file. Is there an easy way to change the modification timestamp of a file without opening it, modifing it, and closing it again? I'd like to do it using standard Perl. I'm using v5.8. I'd like to do it without creating a second or temporary file too. I just want to change the modifiation time, not the contents. It would be great if there was a simple function call to do it. Thanks in advance.

Update
Thanks for all the great answers. I should have said I was using ActiveState Perl on Windows. I just wrote a little touch.pl script and stuck it in my utilities folder. It amounts to this:

use strict;
use warnings;
die "bad file name: $ARGV[0]" if !-e $ARGV[0];
my $atime = (stat($ARGV[0]))[8];
utime $atime, time(), $ARGV[0];
[download]

Comment on Changing file modification timestamp Download Code

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Re: Changing file modification timestamp by Fletch (Bishop) on Jun 04, 2007 at 15:03 UTC
utime is probably what you want (a knowledge of the POSIX C api can be handy).	[reply]
Re^2: Changing file modification timestamp by monktim (Friar) on Jun 04, 2007 at 15:12 UTC
That worked great! You got me, I'm a Windos guy. Thanks.	[reply]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jun 04, 2007 at 15:18 UTC
A file's stats are stored in the parent directory, not in the file itself. That makes the utime call that Fletch and Util recommend very efficient. The file that holds the directory inodes is usually small. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re^2: Changing file modification timestamp by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Jun 04, 2007 at 16:11 UTC
Close, depending on the file system. UFS, for example, doesn't store that information in the directory, but the directory entry points to an inode that contains that information. The reason for this can be seen by attepting to make a hard link if the information is stored only in the parent directory. --MidLifeXis	[reply]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by Util (Priest) on Jun 04, 2007 at 15:06 UTC
It would be great if there was a simple function call to do it. There is a simple function call to do it: utime	[reply]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by doom (Deacon) on Jun 04, 2007 at 18:11 UTC
In addition to "utime", there's also the unix command-line utility "touch". If you use "touch", with no other arguments, it changes the timestamp on a file to the current time.	[reply]
Re^2: Changing file modification timestamp by halley (Prior) on Jun 04, 2007 at 19:07 UTC
In particular, `touch` and `utime` match if the file already exists. The touch command is basically equivalent to: `if utime() fails, if create() succeeds, close() it (zero bytes written) else, give an error message` [download] -- `[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by 13warrior (Acolyte) on Jun 05, 2007 at 07:56 UTC
Actually that is too simple a job you are asking from perl :). If you are in unix you can simply issue a touch command . perl -e "touch filename";	[reply]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by mattr (Curate) on Jun 05, 2007 at 12:18 UTC
It was a while ago but I believe I've used touch on windows, from cygwin. You just need cygwin1.dll in the same folder as touch.exe, and call it from bash.exe.	[reply]
Re^2: Changing file modification timestamp by blazar (Canon) on Jun 07, 2007 at 19:54 UTC
It was a while ago but I believe I've used touch on windows, from cygwin. You just need cygwin1.dll in the same folder as touch.exe, and call it from bash.exe. There are ports which do not require the cygwin emulation layer nor a *nix shell to launched from: Read more... (513 Bytes) OTOH, does anybody remember Borland's `touch.com`?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Changing file modification timestamp by TGI (Parson) on Jun 07, 2007 at 22:47 UTC
You might want to check out Perl Power Tools--a reworking of basic unix commands in perl. It includes a touch implementation. You should also check out the GnuWin32 project. They provide win32 ports for many Unix utilities. TGI says moo	[reply]


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