What does the output of return os.lstat(logFile)[ST_CTIME] mean?

[Thomas Jollans]

On 07/26/2010 07:24 PM, alberttresens wrote:
> 
> Hi, thanks for the reply.

Alas, you didn't actually read it:

> 
> But what i am more concerned about, as I am trying to correlate logs, is
> what is the timestamp:
> 1279620166 mean?
> Is it seconds since the epoch or the ISO time in seconds?
> 
> Any idea?
> 
> Thanks a lot!!
>

[...]

>>> I would like to know the meaning of this number. Is it in seconds since
>>> the epoch?
>>
>> Yes.

You quoted the answer to your question in the same e-mail. fascinating.

A little side note:

>> atime is the simple one -- it is "access time", or when the file was
>> last read.

You should never rely on this, though: some file systems don't store
this (I think) and many users/sysadmins actually disable this
(mount -o noatime) for performance reasons. (Also, on an SSD, I imagine
enabling atime, and with it many, many additional writes, could
noticeably detriment disk lifetime)