Touch Command for setting Creation Date

[flyingscott]

I'm using the command "touch" in the terminal to set the creation date of some old home movies I'm dumping on HD.

I can move the creation date back with the following command:

MacPro:~ scott$ touch -t 200308311500 /Users/scott/Desktop/2-month-bath.mov

The problem now, I cannot move the date back up (when I fat finger)... EVEN if I move the modified date way in the future, the creation date won't move back up with it... Give the command a try on a garbage file and see what I mean.

Any suggestions?

I know there are other scripts and developer commands to do this, but I would really like to use this simple command if possible.

 

[robbieduncan]

Works fine for me? Output from my Mac below:

robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ touch me
robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ ls -l me
-rw-r--r-- 1 robbie staff 0 10 Jan 23:34 me
robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ touch -t 200301010101 me
robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ ls -l me
-rw-r--r-- 1 robbie staff 0 1 Jan 2003 me
robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ touch -t 201001010101 me
robbie-duncans-macbook-pro:~ robbie$ ls -l me
-rw-r--r-- 1 robbie staff 0 1 Jan 01:01 me

I would note that in your example you have one to many 0 in your date/time specifier so the command will fail.

 

[flyingscott]

Works fine for me?

When you do the "ls"... that is showing the modified date, not the creation date... you need to do an "mdls" command and look at the creation date.

 

[robbieduncan]

Are you on Snow Leopard? It still does not work for me...

When you do an ls... that is showing the modified date, not the creation date... you need to do an "mdls" command and look at the creation date.

OK, doing an mdls shows the creation date does not change back to 2010.

 

[flyingscott]

I ended up using this guys script...

http://www.hamsoftengineering.com/codeSharing/ChangeFileDates/ChangeFileDates.html