NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

UTIME(2)                  Linux Programmer's Manual                 UTIME(2)

NAME         top

       utime, utimes - change file last access and modification times

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <utime.h>
       int utime(const char *filename, const struct utimbuf *times);
       #include <sys/time.h>
       int utimes(const char *filename, const struct timeval times[2]);

DESCRIPTION         top

       Note: modern applications may prefer to use the interfaces described
       in utimensat(2).
       The utime() system call changes the access and modification times of
       the inode specified by filename to the actime and modtime fields of
       times respectively.
       If times is NULL, then the access and modification times of the file
       are set to the current time.
       Changing timestamps is permitted when: either the process has
       appropriate privileges, or the effective user ID equals the user ID
       of the file, or times is NULL and the process has write permission
       for the file.
       The utimbuf structure is:
           struct utimbuf {
               time_t actime;       /* access time */
               time_t modtime;      /* modification time */
           };
       The utime() system call allows specification of timestamps with a
       resolution of 1 second.
       The utimes() system call is similar, but the times argument refers to
       an array rather than a structure.  The elements of this array are
       timeval structures, which allow a precision of 1 microsecond for
       specifying timestamps.  The timeval structure is:
           struct timeval {
               long tv_sec;        /* seconds */
               long tv_usec;       /* microseconds */
           };
       times[0] specifies the new access time, and times[1] specifies the
       new modification time.  If times is NULL, then analogously to
       utime(), the access and modification times of the file are set to the
       current time.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS         top

       EACCES Search permission is denied for one of the directories in the
              path prefix of path (see also path_resolution(7)).
       EACCES times is NULL, the caller's effective user ID does not match
              the owner of the file, the caller does not have write access
              to the file, and the caller is not privileged (Linux: does not
              have either the CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE or the CAP_FOWNER
              capability).
       ENOENT filename does not exist.
       EPERM  times is not NULL, the caller's effective UID does not match
              the owner of the file, and the caller is not privileged
              (Linux: does not have the CAP_FOWNER capability).
       EROFS  path resides on a read-only filesystem.

CONFORMING TO         top

       utime(): SVr4, POSIX.1-2001.  POSIX.1-2008 marks utime() as obsolete.
       utimes(): 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES         top

       Linux does not allow changing the timestamps on an immutable file, or
       setting the timestamps to something other than the current time on an
       append-only file.

SEE ALSO         top

       chattr(1), touch(1), futimesat(2), stat(2), utimensat(2),
       futimens(3), futimes(3), inode(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux                            2017-05-03                         UTIME(2)

Pages that refer to this page: indent(1)fcntl(2)futimesat(2)stat(2)statx(2)syscalls(2)utimensat(2)ctime(3)futimes(3)capabilities(7)inode(7)signal-safety(7)time(7)mount(8)