mliberi
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how to change last modification time of a symlink
I need to change last modification time of a symlink. I tried with 'utime' library call, but it follows symbolic link and change the inode.st_mtime field of the file the link is referring to.
Is there another call to change that field to the symlink itself?
If not, does anybody known a trick to do it?
I also read 'touch' man page. It does not have such a functionality.
thank you for your support.
Is there another call to change that field to the symlink itself?
If not, does anybody known a trick to do it?
I also read 'touch' man page. It does not have such a functionality.
thank you for your support.
ahoffmann
touch can do it, but only as user root (not shure for links, this probably also depends on the underlaying shell)
touch sits on top of utime, so if utime can't do it, then touch can't do it either.
What exactly is the problem you're trying to solve? utime follows links because the folks who did links couldn't imagine a situation where anyone would care what the modification time of a link was.
The only way I know of to change the mod time of a link is to delete the link and recreate it.
What exactly is the problem you're trying to solve? utime follows links because the folks who did links couldn't imagine a situation where anyone would care what the modification time of a link was.
The only way I know of to change the mod time of a link is to delete the link and recreate it.
ASKER
I'm trying to restore a saved symlink. I use lchown to restore uid and gid and I would expect a system call or C library call exist to set last modification time too.
Removing and recreating the link is not a solution because it sets current time, not a generic timestamp. Change current time for the time necessary to do that operation is not an accepted solution.
Removing and recreating the link is not a solution because it sets current time, not a generic timestamp. Change current time for the time necessary to do that operation is not an accepted solution.
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