UTIMES(2)

NAME
utimes, lutimes, futimes - set file access and modification times

LIBRARY
libc

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);

DESCRIPTION
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. 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.

lutimes() 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.

RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS
utimes() and lutimes() will fail if:

[EACCES]
    Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix; or 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]
    path or times points outside the process's allocated address space.

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

[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.

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

futimes() will fail if:

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

All of the functions will fail if:

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

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

[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.

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

SEE ALSO
stat(2), utime(3)

HISTORY
The utimes() function call appeared in 4.2BSD. The futimes() and lutimes() function calls first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.