Can the modification time of a file be updated to any date of our choice?

[naziatarannum]

Hi,
Please help in this regard.

Can the modification time of a file be updated to any date of our choice?

Please advise.

Thanks in advance!

[Aia]

Hi,
Please help in this regard.

Can the modification time of a file be updated to any date of our choice?

Please advise.

Thanks in advance!

Look into the command touch

[naziatarannum]

Yes Aia , I checked on 'touch' cmd . but it does not work , i think it wont work in cshell? pl confirm..

[masijade]

Yes it will. Why don't you try showing us what you tried.

P.S. Did you try typing "man touch" first?

[naziatarannum]

Hi All,
I used this, but its updating the modfication time to current time.

touch -m 20091114113000 f1.sh

where.. date is 14th nov 2009 & time is 11:30:00
[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]

where each two digits represents the following:
MM
The month of the year [01-12].
DD
The day of the month [01-31].
hh
The hour of the day [00-23].
mm
The minute of the hour [00-59].
CC
The first two digits of the year (the century).
YY
The second two digits of the year.
SS
The second of the minute [00-61].

[naziatarannum]

My another question is ...

How do we get the modification date of a file.?
I just/only want the modification date.?

i cant use 'ls' cmd, this displays all fields

Please help!

Thanks

[masijade]

touch -m 20091114113000 f1.sh

touch -mt 200911141130.00 f1.sh

Take a closer look at the man page.

[masijade]

My another question is ...

How do we get the modification date of a file.?
I just/only want the modification date.?

i cant use 'ls' cmd, this displays all fields

Please help!

Thanks

The man page for ls and the awk command.

-E           The same as -l, except  displays  time  to  the
                  nanosecond  and  with  one format for all files
                  regardless       of       age:       yyyy-mm-dd
                  hh:mm:ss.nnnnnnnnn (ISO 8601:2000 format).

                  In addition, this option  displays  the  offset
                  from  UTC  in  ISO  8601:2000  standard  format
                  (+hhmm or -hhmm) or no characters if the offset
                  is  indeterminable.  The  offset  reflects  the
                  appropriate standard  or  alternate  offset  in
                  force  at  the  file's displayed date and time,
                  under the current timezone.

ls -E f1.sh | awk '{print $6, $7, $8}'

[Aia]

[...]
I just/only want the modification date.?[...]
i cant use 'ls' cmd, this displays all fields
[...]

As you have been shown you can pipe the ls command to another program that further parses the output, in this case awk.
awk can do a lot of things, but even in its simplest form it can be very helpful dealing with strings. Considerate this:

ls -l | awk '{ print $8 " was modified on " $6 }'

[naziatarannum]

Hi Masijade,
I used the cmd given by you , but its showing this & date isnt changing.

Please help

touch -mt 200911141130.00 f1.sh
usage: touch [-amcf] file ...

[naziatarannum]

Hi All,
I have another question
Does \n not work in csh?
If not, then how do I get to put my text in a new line...

Please help

echo "${var} \n" >> ${MAIL_FILE}

[masijade]

Hi Masijade,
I used the cmd given by you , but its showing this & date isnt changing.

Please help

touch -mt 200911141130.00 f1.sh
usage: touch [-amcf] file ...

I didn't mention, that was on Solaris. On something else the "t" may not be necessary (and is seemingly not on your system), but that decimal point is (when including seconds).

Hi All,
I have another question
Does \n not work in csh?
If not, then how do I get to put my text in a new line...

Please help

echo "${var} \n" >> ${MAIL_FILE}

There is a tutorial at the head of the scripting forum here. Read it.

[naziatarannum]

All,
Thanks a lot.

One more question..
how do I get only the HOURS (no minutes) from the below code?

ls -l f3.sh | awk '{print $7}'

I just know that for getting current date HOURS, this is used

date '+%H'

Please help..........

Thanks in advance

[Aia]

If you want to continue using awk as the workhorse, then:

ls -l f3.sh | awk '{ if( NF > 7 ) { split($7, a, ":"); print a[1] } }'

# if( NF > 7 ) checks that there are more than seven fields
# split($7, a, ":") splits field seven into parts according to delimiter ":" and stores it into array a
# print a[1] displays part 1 which must be the hour

[naziatarannum]

Hi Aia,
Thanks a lot.