Question

Possible Duplicate:
python: which file is newer & by how much time

In python — how do I check — if the file is newer then some other file?

Edit:

There are creation time and modification time.

The question should state the desired property explicitly.

Modification

• os.stat(FILE).st_mtime

• os.path.getmtime(FILE)

Creation

os.path.getctime(FILE) and os.stat(FILE).st_ctime doesn’t give creation time on Unix-like OSes. Link by root has the solution on how to find out the creation time on Unix-like boxes.

Answer 1

You can also use os.path.getctime. This example will return True if file1 was created before file2 and False otherwise.

import os.path
os.path.getctime('file1') < os.path.getctime('file2')

EDIT: Note that there is no cross platform solution to your question — ctime() in Unix means last change time, not create time. The same applies when using os.stat(file).st_ctime.

Here seems to be something that could work on unix machines.