PHP: filectime

Description

int filectime ( string filename )

Returns the time the file was last changed, or FALSE in case of an error. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp.

Note: In most Unix filesystems, a file is considered changed when its inode data is changed; that is, when the permissions, owner, group, or other metadata from the inode is updated. See also filemtime() (which is what you want to use when you want to create "Last Modified" footers on web pages) and fileatime().

Note also that in some Unix texts the ctime of a file is referred to as being the creation time of the file. This is wrong. There is no creation time for Unix files in most Unix filesystems.

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

Tip: As of PHP 5.0.0 this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Appendix L for a listing of which wrappers support stat() family of functionality.

Example 1. fileatime() example

<?php // outputs e.g. somefile.txt was last changed: December 29 2002 22:16:23. $filename = 'somefile.txt'; if (file_exists($filename)) { echo "$filename was last changed: " . date("F d Y H:i:s.", filectime($filename)); } ?>

See also filemtime()

User Contributed Notes
filectime

gyrbo[at]yahoo[dot]com
21-Sep-2002 06:35


filectime doesn't seem to be working properly on Win32 systems (it seems to return the creation time). Try using filemtime if you have problems.

laurent dot pireyn at wanadoo dot be
27-Sep-2001 07:01


If you use filectime with a symbolic link, you will get the change time of the file actually linked to. To get informations about the link self, use lstat.