summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/man2/utime.2
blob: 51073d06652826d869d9548677636538dc9bbdf9 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
.\" Copyright (c) 1992 Drew Eckhardt (drew@cs.colorado.edu), March 28, 1992
.\"
.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft
.\"
.\" Modified by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
.\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
.\" Modified 1995-06-10 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
.\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
.\" Modified 2004-10-10 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
.\"
.TH utime 2 2023-10-31 "Linux man-pages 6.7"
.SH NAME
utime, utimes \- change file last access and modification times
.SH LIBRARY
Standard C library
.RI ( libc ", " \-lc )
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <utime.h>
.P
.BI "int utime(const char *" filename ,
.BI "          const struct utimbuf *_Nullable " times );
.P
.B #include <sys/time.h>
.P
.BI "int utimes(const char *" filename ,
.BI "          const struct timeval " times "[_Nullable 2]);"
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Note:
modern applications may prefer to use the interfaces described in
.BR utimensat (2).
.P
The
.BR utime ()
system call
changes the access and modification times of the inode specified by
.I filename
to the
.IR actime " and " modtime
fields of
.I times
respectively.
The status change time (ctime) will be set to the current time, even if the
other time stamps don't actually change.
.P
If
.I times
is NULL, then the access and modification times of the file are set
to the current time.
.P
Changing timestamps is permitted when: either
the process has appropriate privileges,
or the effective user ID equals the user ID
of the file, or
.I times
is NULL and the process has write permission for the file.
.P
The
.I utimbuf
structure is:
.P
.in +4n
.EX
struct utimbuf {
    time_t actime;       /* access time */
    time_t modtime;      /* modification time */
};
.EE
.in
.P
The
.BR utime ()
system call
allows specification of timestamps with a resolution of 1 second.
.P
The
.BR utimes ()
system call
is similar, but the
.I times
argument refers to an array rather than a structure.
The elements of this array are
.I timeval
structures, which allow a precision of 1 microsecond for specifying timestamps.
The
.I timeval
structure is:
.P
.in +4n
.EX
struct timeval {
    long tv_sec;        /* seconds */
    long tv_usec;       /* microseconds */
};
.EE
.in
.P
.I times[0]
specifies the new access time, and
.I times[1]
specifies the new modification time.
If
.I times
is NULL, then analogously to
.BR utime (),
the access and modification times of the file are
set to the current time.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set to indicate the error.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EACCES
Search permission is denied for one of the directories in
the path prefix of
.I path
(see also
.BR path_resolution (7)).
.TP
.B EACCES
.I 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
.B CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE
or the
.B CAP_FOWNER
capability).
.TP
.B ENOENT
.I filename
does not exist.
.TP
.B EPERM
.I 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
.B CAP_FOWNER
capability).
.TP
.B EROFS
.I path
resides on a read-only filesystem.
.SH STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
.SH HISTORY
.TP
.BR utime ()
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2008 marks it as obsolete.
.TP
.BR utimes ()
4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
.SH NOTES
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,
.\" .BR utimes ()
.\" is just a wrapper for
.\" .BR utime ()
.\" and hence does not allow a subsecond resolution.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR chattr (1),
.BR touch (1),
.BR futimesat (2),
.BR stat (2),
.BR utimensat (2),
.BR futimens (3),
.BR futimes (3),
.BR inode (7)