Get file (modified) date in the YYYYMMDD format?

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Level 1

24 points

Get file (modified) date in the YYYYMMDD format?

Is there any way to get the modification date of a file in the "YYYYMMDD" format? Other than writing a somehow complicated script that parses the output of "ls -l", which in the "May 15, 2009" format?

I have 1000+ files with no creation date but correct modification date. I want to set the creation date to modification date. It seems "touch -t YYYYMMDDhhmm filename" works fine, but I need to get the modification time first. I was hoping I could get it directly in the YYYYMMDD format, to make it easy.

Thanks in advance

macbook pro 2007, Mac OS X (10.6.7), iPhone 3GS and 4, iOS4.3

Posted on May 14, 2011 3:36 PM

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Answer 1

Tuttle

Level 7

29,565 points

May 14, 2011 5:44 PM in response to unixnerd09

You could go into System Preferences > Language & Text > Formats > Dates, click Customize..., and change this:

to this:

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Answer 2

unixnerd09 Author

Level 1

24 points

May 14, 2011 6:14 PM in response to Tuttle

Thanks, so the Finder is using the "Medium" format, which is not something one can easily discover. I almost get what I want except that - of course - it doesn't affect the Terminal.

Now, I can copy the Finder listing in a plain text file (in order to turn it into a script) but it only copies the file names, not the attributes.

Thank you

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

May 14, 2011 6:47 PM in response to unixnerd09

The modification time of file in YYYYMMDD format:

stat -t %Y%m%d file | cut -d\ -f11

There are two spaces after the backslash character.

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Answer 4

unixnerd09 Author

Level 1

24 points

May 14, 2011 7:48 PM in response to Linc Davis

Hi again!

Thanks a lot, that worked fine. I did try stat before but couldn't figure out what to pipe it to in order to extract the field, so I thought it wasn't the right approach.

Very productive day solving my computer problems 🙂

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