I'm reading about find and for one of the tests (-cnewer file) it reads:
File's status was last changed more recently than file was modified.
What is the file's status? It's obviously a date, but in general what does it mean?
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1Have a look to unix.stackexchange.com/questions/2464/…– jlliagreJan 22, 2016 at 20:23
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1 Answer
It's referring to the time when the inode of the file was last changed. In the context of -cnewer of find, status means inode.
You can read more about inodes, what they are and what they contain.
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So an inode is a number that unique identifies an object in the file system (a directory, symlink, hard link, or file) (it's number not it's name, which can be seen with
ls -lai). The inode number doesn't change when you rename or write to a file, so what would change the inode?fsck?– leeand00Jan 22, 2016 at 20:13 -
@leeand00 The inode number will remain the same but the things that inode contains e.g. last modification time, permissions, ownership etc can be changed by operations as you an imagine..
findand all other tools refer to these changes of inode contents not the inode number of the file.....– heemaylJan 22, 2016 at 20:17 -
So a status change constitutes the last date that a change was made to the metadata of a file?– leeand00Jan 22, 2016 at 20:20
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