How do I get the date a file was last modified?

How do I get the date a file was last modified?

I wanted to be able to use the date that a file was last modified, to set the filename of another file. It took me quite a while to find out how to get hold of the date and it turns out that there are three dates on UNIX/Linux. You can use the stat() function.

 
 
#include 
 
#include 
 
#include 
 

 
struct tm* clock;    // create a time structure
 
struct stat attrib;   // create a file attribute structure
      
stat("afile.txt", &attrib);  // get the attributes of afile.txt
 
clock = gmtime(&(attrib.st_mtime)); // Get the last modified time and put it into the time structure
 

 
// clock->tm_year returns the year (since 1900)
 
// clock->tm_mon returns the month (January = 0)
 
// clock->tm_mday returns the day of the month
 
 

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