NAME

       utimes, lutimes, futimes, futimesat — set file access and modification times

LIBRARY

       Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/time.h>

       int
       utimes(const char *path, const struct timeval *times);

       int
       lutimes(const char *path, const struct timeval *times);

       int
       futimes(int fd, const struct timeval *times);

       int
       futimesat(int fd, const char *path, const struct timeval times[2]);

DESCRIPTION

       These  interfaces  are  obsoleted  by  futimens(2)  and  utimensat(2)  because  they  are not accurate to
       nanoseconds.

       The access and modification times of the file named by path or referenced by fd are changed as  specified
       by the argument times.

       If  times is NULL, the access and modification times are set to the current time.  The caller must be the
       owner of the file, have permission to write the file, or be the super-user.

       If times is non-NULL, it is assumed to point to an array of two timeval structures.  The access  time  is
       set  to  the  value  of  the  first  element, and the modification time is set to the value of the second
       element.  For file systems that support file birth (creation) times (such as UFS2), the birth  time  will
       be  set  to  the  value of the second element if the second element is older than the currently set birth
       time.  To set both a birth time and a modification time, two calls are required; the  first  to  set  the
       birth  time  and  the  second to set the (presumably newer) modification time.  Ideally a new system call
       will be added that allows the setting of all three times at once.  The caller must be the  owner  of  the
       file or be the super-user.

       In either case, the inode-change-time of the file is set to the current time.

       The lutimes() system call is like utimes() except in the case where the named file is a symbolic link, in
       which  case  lutimes()  changes the access and modification times of the link, while utimes() changes the
       times of the file the link references.

       The futimesat() system call is equivalent to utimes() except in the case where path specifies a  relative
       path.   In  this case the access and modification time is set to that of a file relative to the directory
       associated with the file descriptor fd instead of the  current  working  directory.   If  futimesat()  is
       passed  the  special  value  AT_FDCWD  in the fd parameter, the current working directory is used and the
       behavior is identical to a call to utimes().

RETURN VALUES

       Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned  and  the  global
       variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       All of the system call will fail if:

       [EACCES]           Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

       [EACCES]           The times argument is NULL and the effective user ID of the process does not match the
                          owner of the file, and is not the super-user, and write access is denied.

       [EFAULT]           The path or times argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

       [EFAULT]           The times argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

       [EINVAL]           The  tv_usec  component  of at least one of the values specified by the times argument
                          has a value less than 0 or greater than 999999.

       [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading or writing the affected inode.

       [EINTEGRITY]       Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system.

       [ELOOP]            Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

       [ENAMETOOLONG]     A component of a pathname  exceeded  NAME_MAX  characters,  or  an  entire  path  name
                          exceeded PATH_MAX characters.

       [ENOENT]           The named file does not exist.

       [ENOTDIR]          A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

       [EPERM]            The  times  argument  is not NULL and the calling process's effective user ID does not
                          match the owner of the file and is not the super-user.

       [EPERM]            The named file has its immutable or append-only flags set.  See the chflags(2)  manual
                          page for more information.

       [EROFS]            The file system containing the file is mounted read-only.

       The futimes() system call will fail if:

       [EBADF]            The fd argument does not refer to a valid descriptor.

       In addition to the errors returned by the utimes(), the futimesat() may fail if:

       [EBADF]            The  path  argument  does  not specify an absolute path and the fd argument is neither
                          AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching.

       [ENOTDIR]          The path argument is not an absolute path and  fd  is  neither  AT_FDCWD  nor  a  file
                          descriptor associated with a directory.

SEE ALSO

       chflags(2), stat(2), utimensat(2), utime(3)

STANDARDS

       The  utimes()  function is expected to conform to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4, Version 2 (“XPG4.2”).
       The futimesat() system call follows The Open Group Extended API Set 2 specification but was  replaced  by
       utimensat() in IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

       The  utimes() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.  The futimes() and lutimes() system calls first appeared in
       FreeBSD 3.0.  The futimesat() system call appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.

Debian                                           March 30, 2020                                        UTIMES(2)