NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON
UTIME(2) Linux Programmer's Manual UTIME(2)
utime, utimes - change file last access and modification times
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <utime.h>
int utime(const char *filename, const struct utimbuf *times);
#include <sys/time.h>
int utimes(const char *filename, const struct timeval times[2]);
The utime() system call changes the access and modification times of the inode
specified by filename to the actime and modtime fields of times respectively.
If times is NULL, then the access and modification times of the file are set
to the current time.
Changing timestamps is permitted when: either the process has appropriate
privileges, or the effective user ID equals the user ID of the file, or times
is NULL and the process has write permission for the file.
The utimbuf structure is:
struct utimbuf {
time_t actime; /* access time */
time_t modtime; /* modification time */
};
The utime() system call allows specification of timestamps with a resolution
of 1 second.
The utimes() system call is similar, but the times argument refers to an array
rather than a structure. The elements of this array are timeval structures,
which allow a precision of 1 microsecond for specifying 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.
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
appropriately.
EACCES Search permission is denied for one of the directories in the path
prefix of path (see also path_resolution(7)).
EACCES times is NULL, the caller's effective user ID does not match the owner
of the file, the caller does not have write access to the file, and the
caller is not privileged (Linux: does not have either the
CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE or the CAP_FOWNER capability).
ENOENT filename does not exist.
EPERM times is not NULL, the caller's effective UID does not match the owner
of the file, and the caller is not privileged (Linux: does not have the
CAP_FOWNER capability).
EROFS path resides on a read-only file system.
utime(): SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 marks utime() as obsolete.
utimes(): 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
Linux does not allow changing the timestamps on an immutable file, or setting
the timestamps 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.
chattr(1), futimesat(2), stat(2), utimensat(2), futimes(3), futimens(3)
This page is part of release 3.08 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/.
Linux 2008-08-06 UTIME(2)