[PHP-DOC] cvs: phpdoc /en/functions filesystem.xml From: Kristian Köhntopp (kk <email protected>)
Date: 08/15/00

kk Tue Aug 15 13:22:01 2000 EDT

  Modified files:
    /phpdoc/en/functions filesystem.xml
  Log:
  Added some clarification regarding filetimes as some people
  in de.comp.lang.php started building last modification time footers based on
  ctimes.
  
  
Index: phpdoc/en/functions/filesystem.xml
diff -u phpdoc/en/functions/filesystem.xml:1.27 phpdoc/en/functions/filesystem.xml:1.28
--- phpdoc/en/functions/filesystem.xml:1.27 Sat Aug 12 16:57:21 2000
+++ phpdoc/en/functions/filesystem.xml Tue Aug 15 13:22:01 2000
@@ -690,6 +690,17 @@
      The results of this function are cached. See
      <function>clearstatcache</function> for more details.
     </simpara>
+
+ <simpara>
+ Note: The atime of a file is supposed to change whenever
+ the data blocks of a file are being read. This can be
+ costly performancewise when an appliation regularly
+ accesses a very large number of files or directories. Some
+ Unix filesystems can be mounted with atime updates disabled
+ to increase the performance of such applications; USENET
+ news spools are a common example. On such filesystems
+ this function will be useless.
+ </simpara>
 
    </refsect1>
   </refentry>
@@ -716,6 +727,19 @@
      The results of this function are cached. See
      <function>clearstatcache</function> for more details.
     </para>
+ <para>Note: In most Unix filesystem, a file is considered
+ changed, when it's Inode data is changed, that is, when
+ the permissions, the owner, the group or other metadata
+ from the Inode is written to. See also
+ <function>filemtime()</function> (this is what you want to use
+ when you want to create "Last Modified" footers on web pages) and
+ <function>fileatime()</function>.
+ </para>
+ <para>Note: In some Unix texts the ctime of a file is being
+ referred to as the creation time of the file. This is wrong.
+ There is no creation time for Unix files in most Unix
+ filesystems.
+ </para>
    </refsect1>
   </refentry>
 
@@ -797,6 +821,12 @@
     <para>
      The results of this function are cached. See
      <function>clearstatcache</function> for more details.
+ </para>
+ <para>Note: This function returns the time when the data
+ blocks of a file were being written to, that is, the time
+ when the content of the file was changed. Use
+ <function>date()</function> on the result of this function
+ to get a printable modification date for use in page footers.
     </para>
    </refsect1>
   </refentry>