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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: xmh and utime()
Message-ID: <28784@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 22-Sep-87 20:03:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.28784
Posted: Tue Sep 22 20:03:13 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Sep-87 01:39:51 EDT
References: <11687@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 32

> According to man utime (on an Ultrix 2.0 system), if the second
> argument to utime is a NULL, then the access and modification times of
> the file are set to the current time.  Sounds like a bug in Sun's utime...

According to "man utime" (on a SunOS 3.x system):

	The "utime" call uses the `accessed' and `updated' times in that order
	from the "timep" vector to set the corresponding recorded times for
	"file".

which says nothing whatsoever about a null pointer as the second argument.
Sounds like a deficiency in your notion of what a "bug" is, or a deficiency in
your notion of which manuals to check for descriptions of the behavior of SunOS
(in case you weren't aware of it, the Ultrix documentation does *not* specify
what SunOS does!)....

The "null pointer as second argument" feature is a System V-ism.  It is
available - to a *limited* degree - in 3.2 and later releases; however, since
the underlying system call ("utimes") does not support this notion, it can only
change the times to the current time if you own the file.

This will be changed in a future release to support a NULL second argument both
to "utimes" and "utime"; the effect will be that, *to the best of the ability
of all systems involved*, the accessed and modified times will be set to the
current time.  You must have write permission on the file or be the owner to do
this; furthermore, if the file is being accessed over NFS, the file system code
on the server must be willing to let you do this.  (It's done by a special hack
on top of the current NFS protocol, so most servers will probably *not* be
willing to do so....)
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com