What does when the file's status was last changed mean?

Question

I'm reading about find and for one of the tests (-cnewer file) it reads:

File's status was last changed more recently than file was modified.

What is the file's status? It's obviously a date, but in general what does it mean?

Have a look to http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/2464/timestamp-modification-time-and-created-time-of-a-file — jlliagre, Jan 22 '16 at 20:23

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 14 '20 at 05:15

1

It's referring to the time when the inode of the file was last changed. In the context of -cnewer of find, status means inode.

You can read more about inodes, what they are and what they contain.

edited Sep 14 '20 at 05:15

John Smith

answered Jan 22 '16 at 19:46

heemayl

So an inode is a number that unique identifies an object in the file system (a directory, symlink, hard link, or file) (it's number not it's name, which can be seen with `ls -lai`). The inode number doesn't change when you rename or write to a file, so what would change the inode? `fsck` ? – leeand00 Jan 22 '16 at 20:13
@leeand00 The inode number will remain the same but the things that inode contains e.g. last modification time, permissions, ownership etc can be changed by operations as you an imagine..`find` and all other tools refer to these changes of inode contents not the inode number of the file..... – heemayl Jan 22 '16 at 20:17
So a status change constitutes the last date that a change was made to the metadata of a file? – leeand00 Jan 22 '16 at 20:20
1

@leeand00 spot on.. – heemayl Jan 22 '16 at 20:20

1 Answers1