FreeBSD Man Pages

utimes(2)

NAME

     utimes, lutimes, futimes -- 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);

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 cur-
     rent 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.

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

     [ELOOP]		Too many symbolic links were encountered in translat-
			ing the pathname.

     [ENAMETOOLONG]	A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX charac-
			ters, or an entire path name exceeded PATH_MAX charac-
			ters.

     [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.

     [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 allo-
			cated address space.

     [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.

SEE ALSO

     stat(2), utime(3)

HISTORY

     The utimes() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.  The futimes() and lutimes()
     system calls first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

FreeBSD 5.4			 June 4, 1993			   FreeBSD 5.4

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