Name

utime, utimes — change access and/or modification times of an inode

Synopsis

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <utime.h>
int utime( const char *  filename,
  const struct utimbuf *  buf);
#include <sys/time.h>
int utimes( const char *  filename,
  const struct timeval   times[2]);

DESCRIPTION

utime() changes the access and modification times of the inode specified by filename to the actime and modtime fields of buf respectively.

If buf is NULL, then the access and modification times of the file are set to the current time.

Changing time stamps is permitted when: either the process has appropriate privileges (Linux: has the CAP_FOWNER capability), or the effective user ID equals the user ID of the file, or buf is NULL and the process has write permission to the file.

The utimbuf structure is:

struct utimbuf {
  time_t   actime;
/* access time */
  time_t   modtime;
/* modification time */
};

The function utime() allows specification of time stamps with a resolution of 1 second.

utimes()

The function utimes() is similar, but the times argument allows a resolution of 1 microsecond for the timestamps. The timeval structure is:

struct timeval {
  long   tv_sec;
/* seconds */
  long   tv_usec;
/* microseconds */
};

times[0] specifies the new access time, and times[1] specifies the new modification time. If times is NULL, then analogously to utime(), the access and modification times of the file are set to the current time.

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, −1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EACCES

Search permission is denied for one of the directories in the path prefix of path (see also path_resolution(7)), or buf is NULL and the process does not have permission to change the time stamps (see above).

ENOENT

filename does not exist.

EPERM

buf is not NULL and the process does not have permission to change the time stamps.

EROFS

path resides on a read-only file system.

CONFORMING TO

utime(): SVr4, POSIX.1-2001.

utimes(): 4.3BSD

NOTES

Linux does not allow changing the time stamps on an immutable file, or setting the time stamps to something other than the current time on an append-only file.

In libc4 and libc5, utimes() is just a wrapper for utime() and hence does not allow a subsecond resolution.

POSIX.1-2001 marks utimes() legacy, which is strange since it provides more functionality than utime().

BUGS

Linux is not careful to distinguish between the EACCES and EPERM error returns. On the other hand, POSIX.1-2001 is buggy in its error description for utimes().

SEE ALSO

chattr(1), futimesat(2), stat(2), futimes(3)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.


Copyright (c) 1992 Drew Eckhardt (drewcs.colorado.edu), March 28, 1992

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.

Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
professionally.

Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.

Modified by Michael Haardt <michaelmoria.de>
Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith <faithcs.unc.edu>
Modified 1995-06-10 by Andries Brouwer <aebcwi.nl>
Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpagesgmail.com>
Modified 2004-10-10 by Andries Brouwer <aebcwi.nl>