Just a side note: the 'c' in ctime doesn't stand for "create" (a common misconception, though). Better think of it as "change", as it refers to when the file's status (i.e. inode meta information) was last changed.
Now, you may wonder what the difference then is to modification time (mtime)... The latter isn't updated when you change the mode/owner/group of the file, or the link count changes, etc. For example:
#!/bin/sh
rm -f foo
touch foo
stat foo
sleep 3
echo bar >>foo
stat foo
sleep 3
chmod o-r foo # changes ctime only
stat foo
Output:
File: `foo'
Size: 0 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 4096 regular empt
+y file
Device: 811h/2065d Inode: 36356982 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ almut) Gid: ( 1000/ almu
+t)
Access: 2010-05-15 11:08:00.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2010-05-15 11:08:00.000000000 +0200
Change: 2010-05-15 11:08:00.000000000 +0200
File: `foo'
Size: 4 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 811h/2065d Inode: 36356982 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ almut) Gid: ( 1000/ almu
+t)
Access: 2010-05-15 11:08:00.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2010-05-15 11:08:03.000000000 +0200 <---
Change: 2010-05-15 11:08:03.000000000 +0200 <---
File: `foo'
Size: 4 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 811h/2065d Inode: 36356982 Links: 1
Access: (0640/-rw-r-----) Uid: ( 1000/ almut) Gid: ( 1000/ almu
+t)
Access: 2010-05-15 11:08:00.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2010-05-15 11:08:03.000000000 +0200
Change: 2010-05-15 11:08:06.000000000 +0200 <---
As you can see, the file was modified before it had been created... ;) |