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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Retaining file modification times
Message-ID: <1991May26.021353.7791@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 26 May 91 02:13:53 GMT
References: <9105211828.AA12327@fozzie.nrl.navy.mil>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 14

In article <9105211828.AA12327@fozzie.nrl.navy.mil> phillips@FOZZIE.NRL.NAVY.MIL (Lee Phillips) writes:

>I want to do something to a file without changing its modification
>time.  I suppose I can write a script to get the time from ls, do the
>modification, then restore the time (after converting it to numerical
>format) with /usr/5bin/touch, but I'm hoping that there is an easier
>way. (Csh solutions preferred.) 

Perl is probably the only utility that has stat and utime implimented
in a way that is directly usable.  Other choices would requre C programming
or lots of contortions.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us