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rfilemetadata

R find time when a file was created

I am using R function list.files to get a list of files in a folder. I would also like to record when each file was created, modified and accessed

how can i do that? i tried google search, but didnt find any useful command

Below screenshot is from my Windows machine. I get it when i right click a file name and click "properties"

enter image description here

Solution

  • Check out file.info() for ctime and other file properties:

    ## With a single path
p <- R.home()
file.info(p)$ctime
# [1] "2014-11-20 08:15:53 PST"

## With a vector of multiple paths
paths <- dir(R.home(), full.names=TRUE)
tail(file.info(paths)$ctime)
# [1] "2014-11-20 09:00:45 PST" "2014-11-20 09:00:47 PST"
# [3] "2014-11-20 09:00:47 PST" "2014-11-20 09:00:50 PST"
# [5] "2014-11-20 09:00:33 PST" "2014-11-20 09:00:33 PST"

    Notice the definition of ctime isn't necessarily the file's creation time:

    What is meant by the three file times depends on the OS and file system. On Windows native file systems ctime is the file creation time (something which is not recorded on most Unix-alike file systems).