$ perldoc -f stat |grep -i time $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks) 8 atime last access time in seconds since the epoch 9 mtime last modify time in seconds since the epoch 10 ctime inode change time in seconds since the epoch (*) Notably, the ctime field is non-portable. In particular, you cannot expect it to be a "creation time"; see "Files and printf "File is %s, size is %s, perm %04o, mtime %s\n", scalar localtime $sb->mtime;