When was my file modified In Linux it depends 16795

So? He didn't say anything about the last accessed time. His complaint was about the modified time.

BTW, if you use "cp -p", in order to preserve the modified time, then the access time on the copy is not updated. Here's a summary. Given a file X, with access-modify-create time of A-M-C, if you do "cp X Y" at time T, you end up with:

X Y -------------- access T T modify M T create C T

and if you do a "cp -p X Y" you end up with this:

X Y -------------- access T A modify M M create C T

and if you use copy and paste in Konqueror, you end up with this:

X Y -------------- access T T modify M M create C ~T

I say ~T for the create time, because the access time was about 1.5 seconds later than the create time on the copy (which is about how long it took me to deal with the name conflict resolution dialog--my guess is that it created a temp file, presented the dialog to get the name, then did the copy). (The other T's can vary slightly, but on the order of milliseconds, so I just called them all T).

Which of these three is "right" is an interesting question (well, to geeks, anyway). (Or whether this:

X Y -------------- access A A modify M M create C T

is what it *should* be doing).

-- --Tim Smith