ctime versus mtime under WIN XP

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

Dear Monks, When was my textfile modified eg overwritten? My report is based on a textfile -"report.txt"- generated by Infomaker (HTML/CSS).With stat and ctime, it's easy to get the creationdate / time, but the modificationdate / time is a neverending story... I've seen a lot of UNIX solutions, but the WIN XP efforts resulted in weird hexadecimal codes, zero's etc. I thought, it would be a very usefull and often used snippet, but even ~~Google~~ I can't find a working solution... Summary: stuck in the mud. The cherry on the cake is missing...

Comment on ctime versus mtime under WIN XP

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Re: ctime versus mtime under WIN XP by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 22, 2009 at 12:38 UTC
I don't know what you're talking about. Getting the mtime works just as well on Windows as on unix systems. `defined( my $mtime = ( stat($qfn) )[9] ) or die("Can't stat \"$qfn\": $!\n");` [download] By the way, ctime is not the creation time. It's the inode modification time. Re^3: File creation and last modifiication time shows the ctime changing.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ctime versus mtime under WIN XP by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 22, 2009 at 13:44 UTC
ctime is not the creation time. It's the inode modification time. Except that st_ino Number of the information node (the inode) for the file (UNIX-specific). "On UNIX file systems, the inode describes the file date and time stamps, permissions, and content.... The inode, and therefore st_ino, has no meaning in the FAT, HPFS, or NTFS file systems." And "lpCreationTime (out, optional) A pointer to a FILETIME structure to receive the date and time the file or directory was created." Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "I'd rather go naked than blow up my ass"	[reply]
Re: ctime versus mtime under WIN XP by Wobbel (Acolyte) on Dec 30, 2009 at 20:17 UTC
Finally, it works on another PC.... " I reinstalled the "problem PC" and now the original code works on this machine too. A waste of time and moreover, I still don't know what caused my headaches. Thanks for the usefull feedback!	[reply]