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

Hi all,

I wrote a script that changes the contents of a file. However, I would like to retain the timestamp for that file.

I have tried the stat() and utime. Assigning $mtime = stat ("$ARGV")[8]and attempting to change $mtime by doing

utime $atime, $mtime, $ARGV; seems to reset the timestamp to the epoch (1969).

Thanks
Xlim


Edited: ~Fri Oct 18 21:32:21 2002 (GMT) by footpad: Added <code> and other HTML formatting tags, per Consideration

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: retaining TIMESTAMPS
by submersible_toaster (Chaplain) on Oct 18, 2002 at 07:14 UTC
    Ok , I think you meant to write 
    $mtime=(stat ( $ARGV[0] ))[9]; # mtime is 9 , atime is 8!!

    [download]

    That is to say , stat the file given as the first (index 0) argument to your script, assigning the eighth element in the stat list to the variable $mtime.

    have a go with this.... 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $mtime = (stat ( $ARGV[0] ))[9];

print "$mtime\n";

open ( F , '>>' ,$ARGV[0] );
print F 'japh';
close F;

utime $mtime, $mtime, $ARGV[0];

$mtime = (stat($ARGV[0]))[9]; ## Update, this is supposed to be a 9 RE
+ALLY
print "$mtime\n";

    [download]
    Of course , anything else modifying this file that DOESN'T reset the timestamp is going to throw an irish-screwdriver in the works.
    that snippet seems to work w/ perl5.6.1 on rh7.3
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Re: retaining TIMESTAMPS
by tadman (Prior) on Oct 18, 2002 at 06:55 UTC
    I think what you mean is @ARGV not $ARGV, such as this: 
    my ($file) = @ARGV;

my $mtime = (stat($file))[9];  # Index 9 according to docs

utime($mtime,$mtime,$file);    # See @ARGV in docs

    [download]
    The extra quotes around variables like "$ARGV" are mostly meaningless, and can be left out.
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Re: retaining TIMESTAMPS
by greenFox (Vicar) on Oct 18, 2002 at 08:26 UTC
    I'm curious :) Why would you want to do that?

    --
    Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

[reply]
      The script I am running on my files just do minor cosmetic changes to them. I need to keep track of the major changes made to these files and also when I made them so that I would know which is the latest and greatest. Thanks, Xlim
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        Fair enough I suppose but surely a versioning system would be more suitable than relying on the date stamp? There is no reason why your script, which is already modifying content, can't update a minor number on the version at the same time.

        --
        Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

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