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From: stewart@magic.ARPA (Larry Stewart)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: file read dates
Message-ID: <183@magic.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 01:54:14 EST
Article-I.D.: magic.183
Posted: Wed Jan 29 01:54:14 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 00:09:33 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: DEC Systems Research, Palo Alto
Lines: 10

Who looks at file read dates?  Do any more-or-less standard Unix
applications look at them?  Are they worth the trouble of maintaining?

For example, a literal interpretation of the semantics of file read dates
in Unix would require that the inode for a directory be re-written every
time the directory was scanned for a file...  Since one can mount
a file system read-only, I presume this is not always done.

	-Larry Stewart
	 Digital Equipment Corporation Systems Research Center