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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-1377?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#action_12507526
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Sameer Paranjpye commented on HADOOP-1377:
------------------------------------------

No, I don't have a particularly compelling use case for creation date. It can 
be dispensed with. Creation time isn't even POSIX, from 'man 2 stat'

#     The time-related fields of struct stat are as follows:
#
#     st_atime     Time when file data last accessed.  Changed by the mknod(2),
#                 utimes(2) and read(2) system calls.
#
#     st_mtime     Time when file data last modified.  Changed by the mknod(2),
#                  utimes(2) and write(2) system calls.
#
#     st_ctime     Time when file status was last changed (inode data modifica-
#                  tion).  Changed by the chmod(2), chown(2), link(2),
#                  mknod(2), rename(2), unlink(2), utimes(2) and write(2) sys-
#                  tem calls.
#

We can implement something like, st_ctime later. It might be useful to have for 
accounting when we have users and permissions.


> Creation time and modification time for hadoop files and directories
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HADOOP-1377
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-1377
>             Project: Hadoop
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>          Components: dfs
>            Reporter: dhruba borthakur
>            Assignee: dhruba borthakur
>             Fix For: 0.14.0
>
>         Attachments: 1377-noctime.patch, 1377.patch, 
> CreationModificationTime.html, CreationTime8.patch
>
>
> This issue will document the requirements, design and implementation of 
> creation times and modification times of hadoop files and directories.
> My proposal is to have support two additional attributes for each file and 
> directory in HDFS. The "creation time" is the time when the file/directory 
> was created. It is a 8 byte integer stored in each FSDirectory.INode. The 
> "modification time" is the time when the last modification occured to the 
> file/directory. It is an 8 byte integer stored in the FSDirectory.INode. 
> These two fields are stored in in the FSEdits and FSImage as part of the 
> transaction that created the file/directory.
> My current proposal is to not support "access time" for a file/directory. It 
> is costly to implement and current applications might not need it.
> In the current implementation, the "modification time" for a file will be 
> same as its creation time because HDFS files are currently unmodifiable. 
> Setting file attributes (e.g. setting the replication factor) of a file does 
> not modify the "modification time" of that file. The "modification time" for 
> a directory is either its creation time or the time when the most recent 
> file-delete or file-create occured in that directory.
> A new command named "hadoop dfs -lsl" will display the creation time and 
> modification time of the files/directories that it lists. The output of the 
> existing command "hadoop dfs -ls" will not be affected.
> The ClientProtocol will change because DFSFileInfo will have two additional 
> fields: the creation time and modification time of the file that it 
> represents. This information can be retrieved by clients thorugh the 
> ClientProtocol.getListings() method. The FileSystem public API will have two 
> additional methods: getCreationTime and getModificationTime().
> The datanodes are completely transparent to this design and implementation 
> and requires no change.

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