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How do I set the creation time of a file?
How can you create a files on a Mac that have a specific creation date (different from the current one)?
What I have found so far, touch can only alter the modified at time...
asked Jul 16, 2012 at 15:58
2 Answers
I believe you can do it with touch.
touch -t YYYYMMDDhhmm /filehere
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touch -tnormally only changes the modification date. The creation date is only changed if the new modification date would be before it.– LriCommented Jul 16, 2012 at 16:52 -
1On 10.7, touch -t appears to work on my test system, even if the mod date is after. I used touch -mt to change the mod time and it works fine.– user25277Commented Jul 16, 2012 at 17:21
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1I meant that
touch file.txt; touch -t 199901010000 file.txtwould change the creation date, buttouch file2.txt; touch -t 209901010000 file2.txtwouldn't.– LriCommented Jul 16, 2012 at 18:05
SetFile can also be used to set the creation date before the modification date or in the future.
-d date Sets the creation date, where date is a string of the
form: "mm/dd/[yy]yy [hh:mm:[:ss] [AM | PM]]" Notes:
Enclose the string in quotation marks if it contains spa-
ces. The date must be in the Unix epoch, that is, between
1/1/1970 and 1/18/2038. If the year is provided as a two-
digit year, it is assumed to be in the 21st century and
must be from 00 (2000) through 38 (2038).
This would set the creation date to the modification date:
SetFile -d "$(GetFileInfo -m test.txt)" test.txt
SetFile and GetFileInfo are part of the command line tools package, which can be downloaded from developer.apple.com/downloads or from Xcode's preferences after installing it from the App Store.
touch -tas well.