what's the difference of -ctime and -mtime in find command?

[常有慈悲心]

find / -ctime +2
find / -mtime +2

thanks everyone

[Pete Randall]

mtime refers to the modification time of the file, while ctime refers to a change in the status information of the file. For example, you could use the touch command to alter the date of the file (the status information), without actually changing the file itself.

At least that's the way I interpret it.


Pete

[Fred Ruffet]

Pete's right. Even if you can chnge both change and modification with touch (-c or -m).

You have 3 dates for a file :
. ctime : change time. It gives you the last time a modification was done on the inode. For example chmod. You can see it with ls -lu file.
. mtime : modification time. It gives the last time the file content was modified. For example with vi. It is the one normally displayed by ls -l.
. atime : access time. It gives you the last time the file was accessed. Even cat modifies this date.

Regards,

Fred