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

[terryl at tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM]

In article <1850 at auspex.auspex.com> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>
> >>If what you say is completely true, you must be running a pretty bizarre
> >>version of UNIX; no version I know of maintains the *creation* time of a
> >>file. 
> >
> >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.

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