find

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <21231 at mimsy.umd.edu> chris at mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:

>`ctime' can be thought of as `time of last operation that requires that
>the file be backed up'.  A backup program can decide whether a file needs
>saving by comparing the file's ctime with the time of the previous backup.

Unless, of course, someone has run cpio with the -a option for the
previous backup like the SysV sysadmin scripts do.  The -a option resets
the atime in order to pretend that the file has not been read, and in
the process modifies ctime. 
Also, wouldn't it make sense for "find -newer" to compare ctime instead
of mtime (except in the above circumstance)?

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us