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NAME
utimes, lutimes, futimes, futimesat — set file access and modification times
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/time.h>
int
utimes(const char *path, const struct timeval *times);
int
lutimes(const char *path, const struct timeval *times);
int
futimes(int fd, const struct timeval *times);
int
futimesat(int fd, const char *path, const struct timeval times[2]);
DESCRIPTION
The access and modification times of the file named by path or referenced by fd are changed as specified
by the argument times.
If times is NULL, the access and modification times are set to the current time. The caller must be the
owner of the file, have permission to write the file, or be the super-user.
If times is non-NULL, it is assumed to point to an array of two timeval structures. The access time is
set to the value of the first element, and the modification time is set to the value of the second
element. For file systems that support file birth (creation) times (such as UFS2), the birth time will
be set to the value of the second element if the second element is older than the currently set birth
time. To set both a birth time and a modification time, two calls are required; the first to set the
birth time and the second to set the (presumably newer) modification time. Ideally a new system call
will be added that allows the setting of all three times at once. The caller must be the owner of the
file or be the super-user.
In either case, the inode-change-time of the file is set to the current time.
The lutimes() system call is like utimes() except in the case where the named file is a symbolic link, in
which case lutimes() changes the access and modification times of the link, while utimes() changes the
times of the file the link references.
The futimesat() system call is equivalent to utimes() except in the case where path specifies a relative
path. In this case the access and modification time is set to that of a file relative to the directory
associated with the file descriptor fd instead of the current working directory. If futimesat() is
passed the special value AT_FDCWD in the fd parameter, the current working directory is used and the
behavior is identical to a call to utimes().
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global
variable errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The utimes() and lutimes() system calls will fail if:
[EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix; or the times argument
is NULL and the effective user ID of the process does not match the owner of the file,
and is not the super-user, and write access is denied.
[EFAULT] The path or times argument points outside the process's allocated address space.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading or writing the affected inode.
[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX characters, or an entire path name
exceeded PATH_MAX characters.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist.
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[EPERM] The times argument is not NULL and the calling process's effective user ID does not
match the owner of the file and is not the super-user.
[EPERM] The named file has its immutable or append-only flag set, see the chflags(2) manual
page for more information.
[EROFS] The file system containing the file is mounted read-only.
The futimes() system call will fail if:
[EBADF] The fd argument does not refer to a valid descriptor.
All of the system calls will fail if:
[EACCES] The times argument is NULL and the effective user ID of the process does not match the
owner of the file, and is not the super-user, and write access is denied.
[EFAULT] The times argument points outside the process's allocated address space.
[EINVAL] The tv_usec component of at least one of the values specified by the times argument
has a value less than 0 or greater than 999999.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading or writing the affected inode.
[EPERM] The times argument is not NULL and the calling process's effective user ID does not
match the owner of the file and is not the super-user.
[EROFS] The file system containing the file is mounted read-only.
In addition to the errors returned by the utimes(), the futimesat() may fail if:
[EBADF] The path argument does not specify an absolute path and the fd argument is neither
AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching.
[ENOTDIR] The path argument is not an absolute path and fd is neither AT_FDCWD nor a file
descriptor associated with a directory.
SEE ALSO
chflags(2), stat(2), utime(3)
STANDARDS
The utimes() function is expected to conform to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4, Version 2 (“XPG4.2”).
The futimesat() system call follows The Open Group Extended API Set 2 specification.
HISTORY
The utimes() system call appeared in 4.2BSD. The futimes() and lutimes() system calls first appeared in
FreeBSD 3.0. The futimesat() system call appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.
Debian April 10, 2008 UTIMES(2)