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

[Harry Gross]

In article <795 at cbnewsl.ATT.COM> dune at cbnewsl.ATT.COM (Greg Pasquariello) writes:
>In article <2268 at faline.bellcore.com> hill at faline.UUCP (Chris Hill) writes:
>>In article <> 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 creation time of any kind.

>The "creation" time refers to the last modified time.  If the last time the
>file was modified was at creation, well then it really is the creation time.
>However, if the file was modified since creation, the two times will not be
>the same.  The inode doesn't even save the creation time, so it is not
>available.

Actually, to quote from section 1 of the manual entry for 'ls' (you remember the
manuals, don't you :-) :-)  :

-c	Use time of last modification of the inode (mode, etc.) instead of
	last modification of the file for sorting (-t) and/or printing (-l)

Also, the structure definition of an inode (as described in S5R2 manuals,
section 4):

			...
			time_t	di_atime;	/* time last accessed */
			time_t	di_mtime;	/* time last modified */
			time_t	di_ctime;	/* time of last status change */
			...

I don't see any mention of the word 'creation' in any of the above entries :-)


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