From f3e9daa8252e6f4faf844b65313fb004be5682f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?K=C3=A1ri=20Tristan=20Helgason?= Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2016 21:28:17 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] doc: add clarification on birthtime in fs stat Clarifies the possibility of birthtime in the fs stat object being greater than atime or mtime when not available in the filesystem (see issue for further info). Fixes: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2222 PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/5479 Reviewed-By: James M Snell --- doc/api/fs.markdown | 9 +++++---- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/api/fs.markdown b/doc/api/fs.markdown index 35fc7cfd370161..257b1de76803b8 100644 --- a/doc/api/fs.markdown +++ b/doc/api/fs.markdown @@ -190,10 +190,11 @@ The times in the stat object have the following semantics: * `birthtime` "Birth Time" - Time of file creation. Set once when the file is created. On filesystems where birthtime is not available, this field may instead hold either the `ctime` or - `1970-01-01T00:00Z` (ie, unix epoch timestamp `0`). On Darwin and - other FreeBSD variants, also set if the `atime` is explicitly set to - an earlier value than the current `birthtime` using the `utimes(2)` - system call. + `1970-01-01T00:00Z` (ie, unix epoch timestamp `0`). Note that this + value may be greater than `atime` or `mtime` in this case. On Darwin + and other FreeBSD variants, also set if the `atime` is explicitly + set to an earlier value than the current `birthtime` using the + `utimes(2)` system call. Prior to Node v0.12, the `ctime` held the `birthtime` on Windows systems. Note that as of v0.12, `ctime` is not "creation time", and