posix - Is there anyway to modify stat information like mtime or ctime manually in Python or any language at all?

Question

I am trying the following code:

os.stat(path_name)[stat.ST_CTIME] = ctime

However, this gives the following error:

exceptions.TypeError: 'posix.stat_result' object does not support item assignment

Is there anyway to modify ctime?

Thanks!

Answer 1

os.utime(filename, timetuple) can be used to set the atime and mtime of a file. As far as I know there is no way to modify the ctime from userland without resorting to hacks such as playing with the clock or direct edition of the filesystem (which I really do not recommend), and this is true for any programming language (Python, Perl, C, C++...) : it's internal OS stuff, and you don't want to touch it.

See for example in the documentation of the touch command (http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/fileutils/fileutils_54.html):

Although touch provides options for changing two of the times -- the times of last access and modification -- of a file, there is actually a third one as well: the inode change time. This is often referred to as a file's ctime. The inode change time represents the time when the file's meta-information last changed. One common example of this is when the permissions of a file change. Changing the permissions doesn't access the file, so the atime doesn't change, nor does it modify the file, so the mtime doesn't change. Yet, something about the file itself has changed, and this must be noted somewhere. This is the job of the ctime field. This is necessary, so that, for example, a backup program can make a fresh copy of the file, including the new permissions value. Another operation that modifies a file's ctime without affecting the others is renaming. In any case, it is not possible, in normal operations, for a user to change the ctime field to a user-specified value.