# File creation time



## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

How can I see what time a file was created?


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## SirDice (Jul 5, 2021)

You don't. It's not recorded.

That's not entirely correct. It depends on the filesystem. It's called "birth" time to prevent confusion with `ctime` (change time). 









						Unix btime specification (creation date) available?
					

Hello,  is there a specification for Unix or in general for btime (creation date) for files and directories?  Could it be that btime must always be lower (before) mtime (modification date)? It would be very good if there is a specification page to read it. Thanks.




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						Is birthtime supported on FreeBSD
					

Timestamps of a file by posix are creation time, last modify time, last access time.    Does vanilla FreeBSD natevly records and supports ctime, mtime, atime and birthtime? Or is this property of filesystem? The filesystem in this case is ZFS. Can birthtime be changed? By which command?




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						finding the creation date
					

Hi everyone,  I have a folder with many subfolders, each subfolder contains an image beginning with the letter R and finishing with the extension rvg, the full name is something like Rx.rvg where x is a variable starting from 1.  I want to get the creation date of each rvg file with the...




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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

Wow
Thanks


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

I see you just edited your post. I have the default file system installed. Is it possible to check with this file system?


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## SirDice (Jul 5, 2021)

There's no default, you have a choice of UFS or ZFS. Both should support birth times but as far as I know it's not actually used by FreeBSD. It's mostly there for compatibility reasons.


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

Ah ok, thanks.


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## bakul (Jul 5, 2021)

`stat -f '%SB %N' foo` will show the birthtime for foo in readable format.


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## Deleted member 67029 (Jul 5, 2021)

Awesome, thanks bakul!


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