Re: Exposing a file's creation time via find(1)

On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 10:40:58AM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
On Friday 24 March 2006 08:55, Ceri Davies wrote:
On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 12:06:18PM +0000, Ceri Davies wrote:

While perusing my Daemon book I noticed that it mentioned the existence
of the st_birthtime field in struct stat. I then also noticed that not
many utilities expose this: the Daemon mentions dump(8), restore(8) and
the only other one I could find was stat(1).

The attached patch adds st_birthtime related primaries to find(1), being
-Bmin, -Btime, -Bnewer et al. These let you use an inode's real
creation time in find primitives. I have chosen 'B' over 'b' to match
the format specifier from stat(1). It seems to do the right thing on UFS
1, 2 and MSDOS file systems, but some more testing would be appreciated.

Note that there is a line out of place in the manpage diff - this is
corrected in a later version of the patch at
http://people.FreeBSD.org/~ceri/find-Btime.diff

Could you add a new flag to ls to use birthtime for -t while you are at
it? Good luck finding a flag to use though. :-P

That's the exact reason I didn't do it this round :)

Andrzej Tobola sent me this patch for ls -U pretty much immediately.

Ceri
--
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
-- Moliere
# Dodanie do ls opcji -U - sortowanie po czasie kreacji
# Provide option -U - sort by time of file/directory creation

--- /usr/src/bin/ls/cmp.c-OLD Fri Jun 3 16:12:35 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/cmp.c Thu Jul 7 03:56:55 2005
@@ -115,6 +115,32 @@
}

int
+birthcmp(const FTSENT *a, const FTSENT *b)
+{
+
+ if (b->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_sec >
+ a->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_sec)
+ return (1);
+ if (b->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_sec <
+ a->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_sec)
+ return (-1);
+ if (b->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_nsec >
+ a->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_nsec)
+ return (1);
+ if (b->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_nsec <
+ a->fts_statp->st_birthtimespec.tv_nsec)
+ return (-1);
+ return (strcoll(a->fts_name, b->fts_name));
+}
+
+int
+revbirthcmp(const FTSENT *a, const FTSENT *b)
+{
+
+ return (birthcmp(b, a));
+}
+
+int
statcmp(const FTSENT *a, const FTSENT *b)
{

--- /usr/src/bin/ls/extern.h-OLD Fri Jun 3 16:12:35 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/extern.h Thu Jul 7 03:51:38 2005
@@ -32,6 +32,8 @@

int acccmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
int revacccmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
+int birthcmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
+int revbirthcmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
int modcmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
int revmodcmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
int namecmp(const FTSENT *, const FTSENT *);
--- /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.1-OLD Fri Jun 3 16:12:35 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.1 Thu Jul 7 04:03:27 2005
@@ -143,6 +143,8 @@
.Dq ell )
option, display complete time information for the file, including
month, day, hour, minute, second, and year.
+.It Fl U
+Use time when file was created for sorting or printing.
.It Fl W
Display whiteouts when scanning directories.
.It Fl Z

--- /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.c.orig Thu Nov 10 05:44:07 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.c Thu Nov 10 15:15:31 2005
@@ -104,6 +104,7 @@

/* flags */
int f_accesstime; /* use time of last access */
+ int f_birthtime; /* use time of birth */
int f_flags; /* show flags associated with a file */
int f_humanval; /* show human-readable file sizes */
int f_inode; /* print inode */
@@ -179,7 +180,7 @@

fts_options = FTS_PHYSICAL;
while ((ch = getopt(argc, argv,
- "1ABCFGHILPRSTWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx")) != -1) {
+ "1ABCFGHILPRSTUWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx")) != -1) {
switch (ch) {
/*
* The -1, -C, -x and -l options all override each other so
@@ -208,14 +209,21 @@
f_longform = 0;
f_singlecol = 0;
break;
- /* The -c and -u options override each other. */
+ /* The -c -u and -U options override each other. */
case 'c':
f_statustime = 1;
f_accesstime = 0;
+ f_birthtime = 0;
break;
case 'u':
f_accesstime = 1;
f_statustime = 0;
+ f_birthtime = 0;
+ break;
+ case 'U':
+ f_birthtime = 1;
+ f_accesstime = 0;
+ f_statustime = 0;
break;
case 'F':
f_type = 1;
@@ -412,6 +420,8 @@
sortfcn = revnamecmp;
else if (f_accesstime)
sortfcn = revacccmp;
+ else if (f_birthtime)
+ sortfcn = revbirthcmp;
else if (f_statustime)
sortfcn = revstatcmp;
else if (f_sizesort)
@@ -423,6 +433,8 @@
sortfcn = namecmp;
else if (f_accesstime)
sortfcn = acccmp;
+ else if (f_birthtime)
+ sortfcn = birthcmp;
else if (f_statustime)
sortfcn = statcmp;
else if (f_sizesort)

--- /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.h-OLD Mon Jan 10 21:06:05 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/ls.h Thu Jul 7 03:53:17 2005
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
extern long blocksize; /* block size units */

extern int f_accesstime; /* use time of last access */
+extern int f_birthtime; /* use time of file creation */
extern int f_flags; /* show flags associated with a file */
extern int f_humanval; /* show human-readable file sizes */
extern int f_label; /* show MAC label */

--- /usr/src/bin/ls/util.c.orig Wed Nov 16 13:00:04 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/util.c Wed Nov 16 14:31:10 2005
@@ -222,9 +222,9 @@
{
(void)fprintf(stderr,
#ifdef COLORLS
- "usage: ls [-ABCFGHILPRSTWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx1]"
+ "usage: ls [-ABCFGHILPRSTUWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx1]"
#else
- "usage: ls [-ABCFHILPRSTWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx1]"
+ "usage: ls [-ABCFHILPRSTUWZabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx1]"
#endif
" [file ...]\n");
exit(1);
--- /usr/src/bin/ls/print.c-OLD Mon Jan 10 21:06:05 2005
+++ /usr/src/bin/ls/print.c Thu Jul 7 04:13:43 2005
@@ -190,6 +190,8 @@
printsize(dp->s_size, sp->st_size);
if (f_accesstime)
printtime(sp->st_atime);
+ else if (f_birthtime)
+ printtime(sp->st_birthtime);
else if (f_statustime)
printtime(sp->st_ctime);
else

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