Finder date created equals date modified

Question

Finder date created equals date modified

MacOS Mojave 10.14.6

When a file is modified, the date created is updated along with date modified.

This problem seems to be ten years old, according to forums. Has Apple ever responded to an inquiry?

Posted on Apr 7, 2020 3:13 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BobHarris

Level 9

56,819 points

Apr 7, 2020 3:41 PM in response to dickharris444

Are you talking about the macOS Creation time, or the Unix st_ctime value?

Unix st_ctime is Metadata Change Time.

The different Unix times can be seen using

stat -x filename

macOS creation time is different and you can see that using

getfileinfo filename

assuming you have installed the Xcode command line tools

sudo xcode-select --install

However, many apps actually create a new file and write the modified contents to the new file, then rename the new file to the old name. That will always end up setting a current Creation time.

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Answer 2

Apr 7, 2020 5:03 PM in response to dickharris444

Confirming. I repeated VikingOS's actions without bothering with command line. Textedit doesn't do this, but Word does.

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2020 4:12 PM in response to BobHarris

Bob: Let's assume it's the app as you suggest unless I get back on this. I'm working with Word, and it's quite possible that it creates a new file for every save. Probably been doing it right along and I just noticed. Thanks to both of you.

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Answer 4

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,242 points

Apr 7, 2020 3:44 PM in response to dickharris444

I just created an empty file on macOS Mojave 10.14.6 (18G4032), waited 16 minutes, and then added text to it. Here is the stat(1) data from that file that shows that the creation date is not updated to the modification date. The Birth of inode is the creation date.

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Finder date created equals date modified

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