Modifying the "Date Modified" date?? Possible?

Khryz · Oct 27, 2010

Can someone tell me if there's a way to manually modify the "Date Modified" date on a file?

I have these overlay "Drawers" for my folders that make it look like the contents of my Movies, Docs, Downloads, etc are in a drawer but the drawers will only be in front if the Date Modified is obviously the newest.

I DL'ed these when Leopard first came out and they were "hacked" I guess to say October 26th, 2010. Well, yesterday is over so now my Drawers are in the middle of the folders.

Can someone help?

RaceTripper · Oct 27, 2010

From the Terminal use the 'touch' command.

LPZ · Oct 27, 2010

Khryz said:
Can someone tell me if there's a way to manually modify the "Date Modified" date on a file?

I have these overlay "Drawers" for my folders that make it look like the contents of my Movies, Docs, Downloads, etc are in a drawer but the drawers will only be in front if the Date Modified is obviously the newest.

I DL'ed these when Leopard first came out and they were "hacked" I guess to say October 26th, 2010. Well, yesterday is over so now my Drawers are in the middle of the folders.

Can someone help?

This can be done from Terminal using the SetFile command, but I don't know if this command is available if you haven't installed the Xcode Developer Tools. You could give this a try, in any case:

Open Terminal (in Utilities) and enter the following but don't press return. Leave a space after the closing quotation mark:

Code:

SetFile -m "1/1/2020 10:10"

Then drag the file you want to modify and drop it in the Terminal window. This will append the file's path to the SetFile command. Click on the Terminal window to make it active, and then press return.

[EDIT]

As suggested by RaceTripper, you don't need the SetFile command for this type of file modification. So instead of the above, you can do this:

Open Terminal (in Utilities) and enter the following but don't press return. Leave a space after the final 0:

Code:

 touch -m -t 202012311010

Then drag the file you want to modify and drop it in the Terminal window. This will append the file's path to the touch command. Click on the Terminal window to make it active, and then press return.

LPZ · Oct 27, 2010

RaceTripper said:
From the Terminal use the 'touch' command.

This will set the modification date to the current date. I think the OP wants to set the modification date to a "distant" future date, so he doesn't need to keep "touching" the file.

RaceTripper · Oct 27, 2010

LPZ said:
This will set the modification date to the current date. I think the OP wants to set the modification date to a "distant" future date, so he doesn't need to keep "touching" the file.

You can specify the access and/or modification date of a file with touch. From the Terminal, type 'man touch' to see the options.

Unix was useful long before the Mac came to town.

LPZ · Oct 27, 2010

RaceTripper said:
You can specify the access and/or modification date of a file with touch. From the Terminal, type 'man touch' to see the options.

Unix was useful long before the Mac came to town.

Thanks, you're right.

RaceTripper · Oct 27, 2010

LPZ said:
Thanks, you're right.

I learned something too. I didn't know about SetFile.

Khryz · Oct 27, 2010

Just curious before I attempt this but what's with the warning of not pressing Enter. Will that severely damage my computer or something?

RaceTripper · Oct 27, 2010

Khryz said:
Just curious before I attempt this but what's with the warning of not pressing Enter. Will that severely damage my computer or something?

You gonna need to provide us a little more context.

LPZ · Oct 27, 2010

Khryz said:
Just curious before I attempt this but what's with the warning of not pressing Enter. Will that severely damage my computer or something?

If you're referring to "but don't press return" then no, pressing return will not do any damage. If you press return before dragging the file into the Terminal window, then you'll enter an incomplete command and the system won't know what file you are trying to modify. You'll get a harmless warning message that tells you what you should have done. The warning looks like this:

Code:

usage: touch [-acfm] [-r file] [-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] file ...

Khryz · Oct 27, 2010

Oh ok thanks you two.

I will try this and let you know if I need anymore help.

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

So, this isn't working. I am getting "No such file or directory" when I do this.

What am I doing wrong?

RaceTripper · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
So, this isn't working. I am getting "No such file or directory" when I do this.

What am I doing wrong?

Hard to say if you don't show what it is you are doing (like the exact command you are invoking).

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

RaceTripper said:
Hard to say if you don't show what it is you are doing (like the exact command you are invoking).

touch -t 209901311234 "FILENAME"

with the FILENAME being the file I drag into the Terminal window. Basically the same command line as what's earlier in this thread.

Then I just go into my Applications folder where I have my Applications Drawer Icon .. select it then drag into Terminal. Click the Terminal window .. then hit enter.

RaceTripper · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
with the FILENAME being the file I drag into the Terminal window. Basically the same command line as what's earlier in this thread.

Then I just go into my Applications folder where I have my Applications Drawer Icon .. select it then drag into Terminal. Click the Terminal window .. then hit enter.

Works for me:
me@myhost: desktop $ touch -t 209901311234 /Users/me/Desktop/test.txt
me@myhost: desktop $ ls -l test.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Dec 26 1962 test.txt

Do you have spaces in your path? If so you'll need to enclose the path in quotes, or you need to escape the space characters with \ before each space.

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

RaceTripper said:
Works for me:
me@myhost: desktop $ touch -t 209901311234 /Users/me/Desktop/test.txt
me@myhost: desktop $ ls -l test.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Dec 26 1962 test.txt

Do you have spaces in your path? If so you'll need to enclose the path in quotes, or you need to escape the space characters with \ before each space.

The only spaces I have are what I see from the quote .. touch[space]-t[space]the#'s[space]theFile .. not right?

LPZ · Oct 31, 2010

RaceTripper said:
Do you have spaces in your path? If so you'll need to enclose the path in quotes, or you need to escape the space characters with \ before each space.

Actually, any spaces in the path should be automatically escaped when the file is dropped into the Terminal window. At least, that's what happens for me.

LPZ · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
The only spaces I have are what I see from the quote .. touch[space]-t[space]the#'s[space]theFile .. not right?

Please copy the line you get in Terminal after dropping your file into the window but before pressing return. Post here.

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

LPZ said:
Please copy the line you get in Terminal after dropping your file into the window but before pressing return. Post here.

After I put in the command then drag the file in I get this:

> \
> \
> \
> D R A W E R S i c o n\
> \
> [ optica optima ]\
> http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/\
> ©2007 Yasushi Chida, All Right Reserved.

This this once I hit Enter:

touch: http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/: No such file or directory

RaceTripper · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
After I put in the command then drag the file in I get this:

> \
> \
> \
> D R A W E R S i c o n\
> \
> [ optica optima ]\
> http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/\
> ©2007 Yasushi Chida, All Right Reserved.

This this once I hit Enter:

touch: http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/: No such file or directory

That's not a file path. It looks like contents of a file. The argument to touch is a valid path to a local file, as in my example above.

It would serve you well to grab a copy of O'Reilly's "Learning the bash shell" because you are missing some really key concepts about using the Mac via a command shell.

LPZ · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
After I put in the command then drag the file in I get this:

> \
> \
> \
> D R A W E R S i c o n\
> \
> [ optica optima ]\
> http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/\
> ©2007 Yasushi Chida, All Right Reserved.

This this once I hit Enter:

touch: http://optica-optima.blogspot.com/: No such file or directory

OK, that's not right. I think the files you want to drag are the "Drawers" that are currently appearing in the middle (rather than the front) each of your folders. Try it for "Drawer" file in your Downloads folder. This file is probably some sort of image file; maybe a .jpg

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

Yeah, that's what I did. I opened Finder .. went into the folder with the icon in it and dragged it into Terminal.

http://cl.ly/33RQ

Those are the Drawers that I use if anyone wants to quickly DL them and take a look .. obviously I am messing something up.

LPZ · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
Yeah, that's what I did. I opened Finder .. went into the folder with the icon in it and dragged it into Terminal.

http://cl.ly/33RQ

Those are the Drawers that I use if anyone wants to quickly DL them and take a look .. obviously I am messing something up.

Please do this. In Terminal, enter

cd ~/Downloads; ls

and press return. The character before the final "s" above is a lowercase L.

Post what you get.

Khryz · Oct 31, 2010

LPZ said:
Please do this. In Terminal, enter

cd ~/Downloads; ls

and press return. The character before the final "s" above is a lowercase L.

Post what you get.

Download .app Drawers.zip

All I have in my Downloads folder is that .zip file I uploaded. Did I pass? Lol.

LPZ · Oct 31, 2010

Khryz said:
All I have in my Downloads folder is that .zip file I uploaded. Did I pass? Lol.

Please repeat the process described earlier. Drag the file named Download .app from the Downloads folder into the Terminal window.

That should modify the date for that file.

Modifying the "Date Modified" date?? Possible?

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