Re: determine when user account created?

From: Barry Margolin (barmar_at_alum.mit.edu)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:00:02 -0400

In article <pan.2004.10.28.04.36.22.84387@yahoo.com>,
 Dave Uhring <daveuhring@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 00:03:54 -0400, Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> > In article <pan.2004.10.28.03.13.36.838600@yahoo.com>,
> > Dave Uhring <daveuhring@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It's *your* home directory :-)
> >
> > Yet you're trying to make some general assumptions about when various
> > dot-files get modified!
>
> I did indicate to you that at least one file in your home directory was
> last modified at its creation date:
>
> "There is almost certainly at least one file there which has remained
> unmodified. I copied my user home directory from another system to this
> one and "ls -lat .??*" clearly shows that my account was created on
> Dec 7, 2002."
>
> If that MAC's userland still resembles FreeBSD-3.2, from which it
> derives, and you don't have access to a Solaris system then what does
>
> $ ls -lat ~/.??*
>
> show you about the file creation dates?

I see, I didn't notice the -t option there. The point you're making is
that the oldest file probably dates to the time when it was created (you
could have just said so, instead of being so obtuse). That's probably
as good a heuristic as you can get. 

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***