What does the value returned by st_mtime in the stat structure mean?

[Dave Jenks]

In article <1990Dec21.041634.12760 at monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> vac269k at monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (vacation) writes:
>
>In my code I have the following lines:
>
>     stat (filename,&statbuf);
>
>     printf ("%ld",statbuf.st_mtime);
>
>This prints out a number like 661742557 for the time the contents
>of the file were last modified.
>What does this number mean and how would I convert to more
>intelligible format (such as day/month/year hour:minute) if
>possible ?

This is the number of seconds since 00:00:00 GMT  Jan  1 1970.
To convert it to something `meaningful', such as the ASCII string
in my previous sentence, use ctime(3).
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>>-@@-> Dave Jenks              {uunet | ucbvax!ucdavis}!csusac!jetfuel
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