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

Question

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.

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