Re: date problem with ls -la --time=ctime

[John Haxby <jch scalix com>]

Rainer Traut wrote:

> John Haxby wrote:
>
> > Rainer Traut wrote:
> >
> > > Question is, what time does ls -la show?
> > > The man page says 'change time', so ctime?
> >
> >
> >
> > mtime -- time of last modification (write).
>
>
> Thx for your fast answer, but I can only specify
> status, atime, access, use and ctime.
> None of them is the same as plain 'ls -la'?

There are three timestamps maintained for files: mtime (modification 
time), atime (access time) and ctime (change time).  ctime differs from 
mtime in that it records a change to the file that doesn't involve 
changing the files contents; chmod, chown, etc affect this.

If you want to delete files in /tmp that haven't been accessed (atime, 
ie read) in the last 15 minutes then

   find /tmp -type f -amin +15 | xargs rm -f

That's going to annoy some people if they're expecting files to hang 
around in /tmp for any length of time, so this is probably better

   find /tmp -type f -user notes -amin +15 |  grep '^/tmp/eo-[^/]*tm$'  
| xargs rm -f

which will restrict the files to those owned by "notes" and, further, 
those that match a specific pattern.   Check the find(1) man page to 
make sure I've got +15 right: I always test it to make sure!

jch

jch