Bash - get file modification, access and change times

In this short article, we would like to show how to get a modification, access, and change times for any file under Bash / Linux.

Quick solution (run the following command):

xxxxxxxxxx

stat path/to/file.txt

Example output:

xxxxxxxxxx

  File: path/to/file.txt

  Size: 4               Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file

Device: 801h/2049d      Inode: 37752       Links: 1

Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)

Access: 2021-09-14 13:10:32.089482633 +0200

Modify: 2021-09-14 13:10:46.558002340 +0200

Change: 2021-09-14 13:11:30.923595933 +0200

 Birth: -

Where:

• Access: 2021-09-14 13:10:32.089482633 +0200
  indicates the time when the file was accessed last time,
• Modify: 2021-09-14 13:10:46.558002340 +0200
  indicated the time when file content was changed last time (e.g. some data was written),
• Change: 2021-09-14 13:11:30.923595933 +0200
  indicates the time when file metadata was changed last time (e.g. file name was changed).