Re: Checking a file's time stamp.

[Christian Heimes]

William Purcell wrote:

Hi all,
I am wanting to check to see the last time a file was edited. For example, I
have a directory containing two text files, file1.txt and file2.txt. I
want to be able to process these files but only if they have been edited
since the last time they were processed. I think that I want to be able to
check the time stamp of each file. Can anyone tell me how to do that or
point me in a better direction of checking the last time a file was edited?

>>import os
stat = os.stat("/etc/passwd")
print stat

(33188, 362259, 2053L, 1, 0, 0, 1690, 1218550501, 1218118498, 1218118498)

>>dir(stat)

['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__doc__',
'__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
'__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__',
'__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
'__repr__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__str__', 'n_fields',
'n_sequence_fields', 'n_unnamed_fields', 'st_atime', 'st_blksize',
'st_blocks', 'st_ctime', 'st_dev', 'st_gid', 'st_ino', 'st_mode',
'st_mtime', 'st_nlink', 'st_rdev', 'st_size', 'st_uid']

>>stat.st_mtime

1218118498.0

[Larry Bates]

Christian Heimes wrote:

William Purcell wrote:

>Hi all,
I am wanting to check to see the last time a file was edited. For
example, I
have a directory containing two text files, file1.txt and file2.txt. I
want to be able to process these files but only if they have been edited
since the last time they were processed. I think that I want to be
able to
check the time stamp of each file. Can anyone tell me how to do that or
point me in a better direction of checking the last time a file was
edited?

>>import os
>>stat = os.stat("/etc/passwd")
>>print stat

(33188, 362259, 2053L, 1, 0, 0, 1690, 1218550501, 1218118498, 1218118498)

>>dir(stat)

['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__doc__',
'__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
'__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__',
'__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
'__repr__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__str__', 'n_fields',
'n_sequence_fields', 'n_unnamed_fields', 'st_atime', 'st_blksize',
'st_blocks', 'st_ctime', 'st_dev', 'st_gid', 'st_ino', 'st_mode',
'st_mtime', 'st_nlink', 'st_rdev', 'st_size', 'st_uid']

>>stat.st_mtime

1218118498.0

use these shortcuts, IMHO they are easier than os.stat.

os.path.getmtime() - get modified time
os.path.atime() - get last accessed time (careful some admins turn this
off on their servers for performance reasons)
os.path.ctime() - get creation time
-Larry