Checking a file's time stamp -- followup

Virgil Stokes vs at it.uu.se
Wed Aug 13 02:02:50 EDT 2008


> Christian Heimes wrote:
>> William Purcell wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> I am wanting to check to see the last time a file was edited. For 
>>> example, I
>>> have a directory containing two text files, file1.txt and 
>>> file2.txt.   I
>>> want to be able to process these files but only if they have been 
>>> edited
>>> since the last time they were processed. I think that I want to be 
>>> able to
>>> check the time stamp of each file. Can anyone tell me how to do that or
>>> point me in a better direction of checking the last time a file was 
>>> edited?
>>
>>
>>  >>> import os
>>  >>> stat = os.stat("/etc/passwd")
>>  >>> print stat
>> (33188, 362259, 2053L, 1, 0, 0, 1690, 1218550501, 1218118498, 
>> 1218118498)
>>  >>> dir(stat)
>> ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__doc__', 
>> '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', 
>> '__getslice__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__', 
>> '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', 
>> '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__str__', 
>> 'n_fields', 'n_sequence_fields', 'n_unnamed_fields', 'st_atime', 
>> 'st_blksize', 'st_blocks', 'st_ctime', 'st_dev', 'st_gid', 'st_ino', 
>> 'st_mode', 'st_mtime', 'st_nlink', 'st_rdev', 'st_size', 'st_uid']
>>  >>> stat.st_mtime
>> 1218118498.0
>>
>
> use these shortcuts, IMHO they are easier than os.stat.
>
> os.path.getmtime() - get modified time
> os.path.atime()    - get last accessed time (careful some admins turn 
> this
>                      off on their servers for performance reasons)
> os.path.ctime()    - get creation time
>
>
> -Larry 
Is it possible to change the time stamp of a file (Win2K platform)? If 
yes, how?



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