Change file creation date to modification date using terminal

Question

So I have a bunch of pictures that have incorrect creation dates but their real creation dates are the same as the current modification dates. Is it possible to correct this using some batch command in terminal? I've been messing around with the setFile + stat commands but it's not really working out since I'm terrible with terminal. Does anyone here now the correct way to do this?

Also is it possible to incorporate this into a find command? So that all pics with "IMG" in them get this treatment but no others?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

To use @user3439894's answer with find, use the -exec command {} + clause, and put the for loop into a sh script:

find some/path -iname \*.img -exec sh -c 'for f in "$@"; do m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")"; SetFile -m "$m" -d "$m" "$f"; done' sh {} +

The 2nd "sh" will become the $0 inside the spawned shell, and the .img filenames will be the positional parameters $1, $2, ...

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Not an explanation but a demonstration of "sh as $0"

Say you have a script like this, named script.sh

echo "$0"
echo "$1"
echo "$2"

Running it with some parameters gives:

$ sh script.sh first second third
script.sh
first
second

However, when you use -c "$script_body", then the first argument slides into $0

$ sh -c 'echo "$0"; echo "$1"; echo "$2"' first second third
first
second
third

This is important because the special variables "$*" and "$@" takes the positional arguments starting with $1

Answer 2

If you have both SetFile and GetFileInfo, you can set the creation date to that of the modified date on .IMG files by doing the following:

In Terminal, first change directory cd to the location of the target .IMG files.

cd /path/to/target/files

Then execute the following compound command:

for f in *.[iI][mM][gG]; do m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")"; SetFile -m "$m" -d "$m" "$f"; done

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Note: It is always a good idea to first test on a small sample of the target files copied to another folder and check the results first, then proceed on the original files. One should also always have normal regular backups as well before proceeding, e.g using Time Machine or other backup software.

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If you do not have GetFileInfo and want to use stat, then directly after do replace:

m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")";

With:

m="$(stat -f'%Sm' -t "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$f")";

Giving you the full compound command:

for f in *.[iI][mM][gG]; do m="$(stat -f'%Sm' -t "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$f")"; SetFile -m "$m" -d "$m" "$f"; done

Note: This assumes you do have at least one .IMG file in the directory, otherwise it causes a non-fatal error, meaning nothing has changed:

stat: *.[iI][mM][gG]: stat: No such file or directory
ERROR: invalid date/time

To use find, see glenn jackman's answer.