Why does "file" change the creation time on some Unix systems?

[Frank Wales]

In article <4217 at tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> terryl at tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM writes:
>In article <1850 at auspex.auspex.com> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>> >If so, to what "creation" time does the -c option of ls refer?
>>
>>It doesn't refer to *ANY* "creation" time, it refers to the inode change
>>time.  If your manual says it refers to the creation time, either your
>>manual is wrong or you're running a pretty bizarre version of UNIX.
>
>     Well, then, Guy, I guess you can call 4.3 BSD+NFS "a pretty bizarre
>version of UNIX"; to wit, I quote part of the standard ls(1) man page:
>
>	-c   Use time of file creation for sorting or printing.

In article <22874 at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> (Steve Hayman) writes:
>Subject: Frequently Asked Questions about Unix - with Answers.
>
>11) How do I find out the creation time of a file?
>
>    You can't - it isn't stored anywhere.  Files have a last-modified
>    time (shown by "ls -l"), a last-accessed time (shown by "ls -lu")
>    and an inode change time (shown by "ls -lc"). The latter is often
>    referred to as the "creation time" - even in some man pages -  but
>    that's wrong; it's the time the file's status was last changed,
>    either by writing or changing the inode (via mv or chmod, etc...).
>
>    The man page for "stat(2)" discusses this.
--
Frank Wales, Systems Manager,        [frank at zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank]
Zengrange Ltd., Greenfield Rd., Leeds, ENGLAND, LS9 8DB. (+44) 532 489048 x217