Both methods will give you a number related to when the file was modified.

With -M, any time your script was restarted, any saved modification time would be relative to an old reference: the previous run of your script. Unless you also saved the last start time of your script, you would have to make an assumption about the "newness" of the file.

With stat, the reference is always the epoch, so your saved modification time will always be valid, no matter when your script last ran nor how many times it was restarted.

In reply to Re^5: Which feed method? by RonW
in thread Which feed method? by hankcoder

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