Change the date of file

[O'lnes]

How to change the date of a file? Thanks.

eg.

From:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 20000 Aug 22 01:25 file

To:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 20000 Aug 21 01:25 file

[Michael Tully]

Try the 'touch' command

# touch -t 200208210125 test1
# ll test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Aug 21 01:25 test1

[RAC_1]

touch command. Check touch man page

[Patrick Chim · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can use touch to do that.

touch -t YYMMDDhhmm.SS filename
where YYMMDD is year to day
and hhmmSS is hour to second.

Regards,
Patrick

[Michael Tully]

I dont' want to play the points policeman, but your assignment of points to questions is not good. Please remember that people in the forums assist using their own spare time and resources to help you. Please abide by the forums etiquette and assign points to your questions.

[O'lnes]

Thx all.

[John Bolene]

touch only modifies the date that is normally shown

there are other dates associated with a file such as creation date

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

The is *no* creation date for a file, only a *modification* date which the first time would be the same as a creation date.

There is also a last-access timestamp and a last-inode-change timestamp.

'touch' can be used to change the modification timestamp ('touch -m') or the last-access timestamp ('touch -a').

'ls -l' shows a file's modification timestamp.
'ls -ul' shows a file's last-access timestamp.
'ls -cl' shows a file's last inode change (change of permissions, ownership, etc.).

Regards!

...JRF...

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

All answers give an 'absolute' answer. They don't apply to the question that probably was intended as "How do I put the dat of a file one day back?". Relative.



l1:/tmp 125 > ll xx
697 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 4306 Aug 22 17:19 xx
l1:/tmp 126 > perl -e'for(@ARGV){utime((map{$_-86400}(stat)[8,9]),$_)}' xx
l1:/tmp 127 > ll xx
697 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 4306 Aug 21 17:19 xx
l1:/tmp 128 >

l1:/tmp 130 > ll xx.*
861 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 71315 Aug 22 17:24 xx.html
869 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 128 Aug 9 17:17 xx.pl
686 -rwxrw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 3033 Jul 24 15:59 xx.txt
l1:/tmp 131 > perl -e'for(@ARGV){utime((map{$_-86400}(stat)[8,9]),$_)}' xx.*
l1:/tmp 132 > ll xx.*
861 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 71315 Aug 21 17:24 xx.html
869 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 128 Aug 8 17:17 xx.pl
686 -rwxrw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 3033 Jul 23 15:59 xx.txt
l1:/tmp 133 >


HTH