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.\" Copyright, the authors of the Linux man-pages project
.\"
.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft
.\"
.TH utime 2 2025-05-17 "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"
.SH NAME
utime, utimes \- change file last access and modification times
.SH LIBRARY
Standard C library
.RI ( libc ,\~ \-lc )
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <utime.h>
.P
.BI "int utime(const char *" path ,
.BI " const struct utimbuf *_Nullable " times );
.P
.B #include <sys/time.h>
.P
.BI "int utimes(const char *" path ,
.BI " const struct timeval " times "[_Nullable 2]);"
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Note:
modern applications may prefer to use the interfaces described in
.BR utimensat (2).
.P
The
.BR utime ()
system call
changes the access and modification times of the inode specified by
.I path
to the
.IR actime " and " modtime
fields of
.I times
respectively.
The status change time (ctime) will be set to the current time, even if the
other time stamps don't actually change.
.P
If
.I times
is NULL, then the access and modification times of the file are set
to the current time.
.P
Changing timestamps is permitted when: either
the process has appropriate privileges,
or the effective user ID equals the user ID
of the file, or
.I times
is NULL and the process has write permission for the file.
.P
The
.I utimbuf
structure is:
.P
.in +4n
.EX
struct utimbuf {
time_t actime; /* access time */
time_t modtime; /* modification time */
};
.EE
.in
.P
The
.BR utime ()
system call
allows specification of timestamps with a resolution of 1 second.
.P
The
.BR utimes ()
system call
is similar, but the
.I times
argument refers to an array rather than a structure.
The elements of this array are
.I timeval
structures, which allow a precision of 1 microsecond for specifying timestamps.
The
.I timeval
structure is:
.P
.in +4n
.EX
struct timeval {
long tv_sec; /* seconds */
long tv_usec; /* microseconds */
};
.EE
.in
.P
.I times[0]
specifies the new access time, and
.I times[1]
specifies the new modification time.
If
.I times
is NULL, then analogously to
.BR utime (),
the access and modification times of the file are
set to the current time.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set to indicate the error.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EACCES
Search permission is denied for one of the directories in
the path prefix of
.I path
(see also
.BR path_resolution (7)).
.TP
.B EACCES
.I times
is NULL,
the caller's effective user ID does not match the owner of the file,
the caller does not have write access to the file,
and the caller is not privileged
(Linux: does not have either the
.B CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE
or the
.B CAP_FOWNER
capability).
.TP
.B EFAULT
.I path
points to an invalid address.
.TP
.B ENOENT
.I path
does not exist.
.TP
.B EPERM
.I times
is not NULL,
the caller's effective UID does not match the owner of the file,
and the caller is not privileged
(Linux: does not have the
.B CAP_FOWNER
capability).
.TP
.B EROFS
.I path
resides on a read-only filesystem.
.SH STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
.SH HISTORY
.TP
.BR utime ()
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2008 marks it as obsolete.
.TP
.BR utimes ()
4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
.SH NOTES
Linux does not allow changing the timestamps on an immutable file,
or setting the timestamps to something other than the current time
on an append-only file.
.\"
.\" In libc4 and libc5,
.\" .BR utimes ()
.\" is just a wrapper for
.\" .BR utime ()
.\" and hence does not allow a subsecond resolution.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR chattr (1),
.BR touch (1),
.BR futimesat (2),
.BR stat (2),
.BR utimensat (2),
.BR futimens (3),
.BR futimes (3),
.BR inode (7)
|
