Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!network!ucsd!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bu-cs!lll-winken!arisia!masinter From: masinter@masunter.PARC.xerox.com (Larry Masinter) Newsgroups: gnu.emacs Subject: getting file date, owner Message-ID: Date: 25 Aug 89 10:54:59 GMT Sender: news@arisia.Xerox.COM Distribution: gnu Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 32 I need to get a file's owner & its creation date as strings. file-attributes returns the values coded, but there doesn't seem any simple way to turn those values into strings, at least in the 'correct' format. I need the file creation date in some canonical format that includes the time & date (e.g., the format that (current-time-string) uses would do.) ;; This is what I'm doing, which is awful on a number of counts: (defun 33file-attributes (file) "Return list of file creator, last modification." (save-excursion (let((buf (get-buffer-create "*33 ls*"))) (set-buffer buf) (erase-buffer) (call-process "ls" nil t nil "-l -d" file) (goto-char 15) (forward-word 1) (list (buffer-substring 15 (point)) (buffer-substring 33 45))))) ;; Something like this would be OK (defun 33file-attributes (file) (let ((att (file-attributes file))) (list (uid-name (nth 2 att)) ;no way to do this (date-string (nth 4 att))))) ;probably I could hack this in ELisp Suggestions? -- Larry Masinter (Masinter.PA@Xerox.COM) Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) 3333 Coyote Hill Road; Palo Alto, CA USA 94304 TEL: (415)494-4365