Re: touch(1) documentation improvement suggestions

[Andreas Schwab]

address@hidden (Dan Jacobson) writes:

|> >>>>> "Jim" == Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
|> 
|> Jim> | The man and info only talk about changing two
|> Jim> | Access: Sat Jan  1 01:01:00 1972
|> Jim> | Modify: Sat Jan  1 01:01:00 1972
|> Jim> | times but the third
|> Jim> | Change: Thu Mar 15 15:18:01 2001
|> Jim> | is unmentioned.  They should mention something about the third time,
|> Jim> | in case the user is curious.
|> 
|> Jim> Patches (or even suggested wording) welcome :-)
|> 
|> OK, deep, say, in an Info page, mention: "The user might be curious,
|> why does the ls(1) command mention, and the unofficial stat(1) command
|> output three kind of times, whilst the touch command only allows one
|> to manipulate two of them.  In particular the ctime, which refers to a
|> file's [....] does not have a touch(1) option to control it.  This is
|> due to [...]   One way to manipulate the ctime if one insists, is to
|> use the [...] command ...."

There is no way to set the ctime to a particular value except `now' (by
touching the inode in any way).

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab                                  "And now for something
SuSE Labs                                        completely different."
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