I believe the -C option relative to a filename represents the ctime of the inode. Don't ask me what this means, I'm just reading about it in a book (Perl Cookbook). I've read far enough to get to the following line: "The ctime is not the creation time; there is NO way under standard UNIX to find a file's creation time." Bummer since that is what I think you're trying to do. I'm not saying that it can't be done from personal experience, I'm just stating what was in the book! Below is a brief explanation as stated in the Perl Cookbook.

An inode (index-node) is an entry in the index that are relative to a set of data blocks. The inode is a flat file and is addressed by number. An inode acts as a pointer to a specific set of data blocks, but also contains information on the type of things it represents (directory, plain file, etc).

The inode contains many fields, but of relevance to this post: atime, ctime, and mtime.

atime - updated every time pointer to the file's data blocks is followed and the file's data is read

ctime - updated each time the file's inode changes

mtime - updated each time the file's data changes

You might also want to read up about File::Stat, which provides an interface to all of these values. It's a very effective method of obtaining information about a certain file.

HTH, Eric

In reply to Re: Please explain -C / inode by emilford
in thread Please explain -C / inode by Elliott

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