How to get file creation time

[varakal]

I have couple of questions:
1) How do we know when a file is created. In stat, atime gives the last access time and mtime gives the last modified time. But is there a way to know when the file is first created.

2) I feel this is something more difficult, is there a direct way to find when a file got deleted with in the past 5 minutes.

Thanks.

 

[PaulTEG]

both points 1 and 2 are possible, but you'd need to be monitoring the directory on a full time basis to work

open FH, "<last_directory_read";
@oldfiles=<FH>';
close FH;
DIR=opendir "$directory";
@thisfiles=readdir DIR;
closedir DIR;
foreach (@oldfiles) {
   #check to see if $_ exists in @thisfiles
   #if not, then it's been deleted, so log accordingly
}
foreach (@thisfiles) {
   #check to see if $_ exists in @oldfiles
   #if not, then it's been created, so log accordingly
   open FH, ">last_directory_read";
   print FH "$_\n";
}

[code]

HTH
--Paul

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