OSX - How to get the creation & modification time of a file from the command line

Question

While solving some programming puzzle, I wanted to see how long it took me to write a solution to the problem. To do so, I thought it\'d be a good idea to compare the file c

Answer 1

As you already identified, the real culprit was that vim resets all 4 datetime stamps.

But to answer your original question, here is a stat formatting for Mac OSX that will clearly show the 4 datetime stamps (including Creation/Birth and Modify):

stat -f "Access (atime): %Sa%nModify (mtime): %Sm%nChange (ctime): %Sc%nBirth  (Btime): %SB" file.txt

Access (atime): Nov 16 19:44:55 2017
Modify (mtime): Nov 16 19:44:25 2017
Change (ctime): Nov 16 19:44:48 2017
Birth  (Btime): Nov 16 19:44:05 2017

Answer 2

stat reports the standard Unix dates, last access time, last modification time, and inode change time (which is often mistaken for creation time). Mac OS X also maintains the file creation time, and it's accessible using the GetFileInfo command:

$ GetFileInfo -d .bash_profile
10/08/2015 09:26:35

Here's a more complete example:

$ ls -l my_file.py
ls: my_file.py: No such file or directory
$ touch my_file.py
$ stat -x my_file.py
  File: "my_file.py"
  Size: 0            FileType: Regular File
  Mode: (0644/-rw-r--r--)         Uid: (  501/     blm)  Gid: (   20/   staff)
Device: 1,5   Inode: 26863832    Links: 1
Access: Sun Dec  6 13:47:24 2015
Modify: Sun Dec  6 13:47:24 2015
Change: Sun Dec  6 13:47:24 2015
$ GetFileInfo my_file.py
file: "/Users/blm/my_file.py"
type: "\0\0\0\0"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 12/06/2015 13:47:24
modified: 12/06/2015 13:47:24
$ echo hello >my_file.py
$ stat -x my_file.py
  File: "my_file.py"
  Size: 6            FileType: Regular File
  Mode: (0644/-rw-r--r--)         Uid: (  501/     blm)  Gid: (   20/   staff)
Device: 1,5   Inode: 26863832    Links: 1
Access: Sun Dec  6 13:47:24 2015
Modify: Sun Dec  6 13:47:35 2015
Change: Sun Dec  6 13:47:35 2015
$ GetFileInfo my_file.py
file: "/Users/blm/my_file.py"
type: "\0\0\0\0"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 12/06/2015 13:47:24
modified: 12/06/2015 13:47:35
$ cat my_file.py
hello
$ stat -x my_file.py
  File: "my_file.py"
  Size: 6            FileType: Regular File
  Mode: (0644/-rw-r--r--)         Uid: (  501/     blm)  Gid: (   20/   staff)
Device: 1,5   Inode: 26863832    Links: 1
Access: Sun Dec  6 13:47:54 2015
Modify: Sun Dec  6 13:47:35 2015
Change: Sun Dec  6 13:47:35 2015
$ GetFileInfo my_file.py
file: "/Users/blm/my_file.py"
type: "\0\0\0\0"
creator: "\0\0\0\0"
attributes: avbstclinmedz
created: 12/06/2015 13:47:24
modified: 12/06/2015 13:47:35

Note that using vim to test this may be misleading because vim will write your modified file to a new temporary file, then rename the old one and the new one, so the creation time will be updated to when the file was written. See this post for a workaround I came up with for that.