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Comment by wener | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's time ?

btime I mean

Under Linux

    $ stat `which stat`
      File: '/usr/bin/stat'
      Size: 80944           Blocks: 160        IO Block: 4096   regular file
    Device: fd01h/64769d    Inode: 1196257     Links: 1
    Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
    Access: 2016-09-22 15:30:03.759501920 +0800
    Modify: 2016-02-18 21:37:47.000000000 +0800
    Change: 2016-09-08 18:17:26.611169858 +0800
     Birth: -

Under OSX

    $ stat `which stat`
      File: '/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/stat' -> '../../bin/gstat'
      Size: 15             	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   symbolic link
    Device: 1000004h/16777220d     	Inode: 17293277    Links: 1
    Access: (0755/lrwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  501/   wener)   Gid: (   80/   admin)
    Access: 2016-01-26 19:01:40.000000000 +0800
    Modify: 2016-01-21 02:56:37.000000000 +0800
    Change: 2016-01-26 19:01:40.000000000 +0800
     Birth: 2016-01-21 02:56:37.000000000 +0800

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So what is the difference between "modify" and "change"??

Content modification vs. metadata modification I believe.

It's the other way around. ctime (status change) for metadata, mtime (modification) for files contents, atime (access) for file access.

Part of the confusion for {c,m}time probably comes from

  [c]time: [c]hange       [m]etadata
  [m]time: [m]odify] file [c]ontents

yeah, that was my first reaction: how do I know which one is which?

well, if you need to check in future, like this:

    $ man 2 stat

ctime is when the inode or file changes in terms of stat, ownership, etc. mtime is when the contents of the file is changed.

Off Topic — Which one is better?

    $ stat `which stat`
    $ stat $(which stat)

Backticks if lazy, parenthetical for complicated command lines.

Haha, I read that as "...complicated command times."

Close enough!

Backticks are discouraged for any new scripts, since they complicate nesting, quoting, and escaping, besides being graphically less explicit. See also http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/082. The Open Group also discourages backticks: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/xrat/V4_xcu_....

    $ stat "$(which stat)"

shellcheck or its online version http://www.shellcheck.net/ help a lot

$(...) doesn't trip Shellcheck and is slightly more readable and less error-prone in complex statements, e.g. if you have to nest commands.

which probably isn't the best tool to use here.

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/85249/why-not-use-wh...

I was about to ask how you got that pretty-print output from OSX's `stat` before I noticed you were using `gstat`. Oddly enough, the native `stat -x` gives a similar output but omits birth time:

    $ stat -x `which stat`
      File: "/usr/bin/stat"
      Size: 27376        FileType: Regular File
      Mode: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)         Uid: (    0/    root)  Gid: (    0/   wheel)
    Device: 1,4   Inode: 192606219    Links: 1
    Access: Thu Sep 22 11:50:55 2016
    Modify: Fri Jul  8 23:03:34 2016
    Change: Sun Jul 31 21:44:22 2016

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