Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!bsu-cs!cfchiesa
From: cfchiesa@bsu-cs.UUCP (Sir Xetwnk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: files date.
Message-ID: <2072@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 88 23:19:38 GMT
References: <8802091036.AA20109@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 26
Summary: Reason 1A to change a file date!

In article <8802091036.AA20109@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, V4039@TEMPLEVM.BITNET (Stan Horwitz) writes:
> 
>   I am not very familiar with VAXen to say if it is possible to set the
> date stored with each file.  

   Yes, you can, several different ways in fact.  One is to CONVERT/FDL the
file to a new file with all its attributes the same as that of the first file,
except for the particular date field (there are several) you want to change,
which you specify in the FDL file for the /FDL qualifier.

> 
>   In any case, it doesn't make much sense to want to change a file's dates.
> Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

Speaking as a student who has never actually done this, but who knows people
who HAVE, I'd have to say that the main reason people want to change that 
creation or modification date is to make a homework program assignment look
as though it was finished on time rather than late -- a lot of profs go by
the file-creation time, if there's any question... Most don't even do that 
much, prompting a friend of mine last year to create a file containing a per-
fect duplicate of a print-queue header page, which he prepended to a listing
file from which he'd edited out all the compilation errors.  He turned the 
whole thing in, along with a similarly faked output printout, and got pretty
good points for a program that wouldn't even compile...

I'm sure there may be other reasons for changing a file date, too...