Returns the time the file was last changed, or FALSE in case of
an error. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp.
Examples
Example #1 A filectime() example
<?php
// outputs e.g. somefile.txt was last changed: December 29 2002 22:16:23.
$filename = 'somefile.txt'; if (file_exists($filename)) { echo "$filename was last changed: " . date("F d Y H:i:s.", filectime($filename)); }
?>
Notes
Note:
Note: In most Unix filesystems, a file is considered changed when its
inode data is changed; that is, when the permissions, owner, group, or
other metadata from the inode is updated. See also
filemtime() (which is what you want to use when you
want to create "Last Modified" footers on web pages) and
fileatime().
Note:
Note also that in some Unix texts the ctime of a file is referred to as
being the creation time of the file. This is wrong. There is no creation
time for Unix files in most Unix filesystems.
Note: The results of this
function are cached. See clearstatcache() for
more details.
Tip
As of PHP 5.0.0, this function
can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to
List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers for a listing of which wrappers support
stat() family of functionality.