File attribute modification program not working

[Simeonn]

Hy everyone!
I'm new here (that's my first post) and I would like you to excuse my English but I'm French.

As a project for my university class, I've to write a dropbox-like program in C.

I would like to modify attributes like modification/creation dates.
The function is correctly working as if I type in "ls -al", the timestamp is correct. But when using my program to read these attributes, it returns the "real" modification/creation date.

Here is the function that shows the timestamp :

time_t t = sb.st_mtime; struct tm tm = *localtime (&t); 
char s[32]; 
strftime (s, sizeof s, "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S", &tm); 
printf ("%-14s %s", lecture->d_name, s);

And here is the code for modifying the timestamps :

void modifyAttributes(char * file, int mtime, int atime)
{
    struct utimbuf ubuf;
    ubuf.modtime = mtime;
    ubuf.actime = atime;
    utime(file, &ubuf);
}

Can you help me on this issue?

Thank you

[Salem]

After modifying the timestamp, do you then do closedir() and opendir() to get a fresh copy of the file attributes (as stored on the file system)?

[Simeonn]

I don't understand. utime is called using only the path of the file. Do I have to do it a different way?
I mean, my program should be the "modifyAttributes" function as the main function. I don"t use opendir() or closedir() for that part.

[Salem]

> time_t t = sb.st_mtime; struct tm tm = *localtime (&t);
> char s[32];
> strftime (s, sizeof s, "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S", &tm);
> printf ("%-14s %s", lecture->d_name, s);
Who sets up lecture->d_name?

This comes from opendir / readdir.

If you don't closedir/opendir, then my guess is stale data.

Post a whole program we can run, not a handful of random lines from your own guesswork.

[Simeonn]

Yes sorry.

Here is the whole function. address="../" in my example :

void createLog(char * address){
	FILE *fp;
	
	struct stat sb;
	
  
    struct dirent *lecture;
	
	if(stat(address, &sb) == -1)
	{
		perror("there is no such directory");
		exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
	}
	
	
	printf("Last status change:       %s", ctime(&sb.st_ctime));
    printf("Last file access:         %s", ctime(&sb.st_atime));
    printf("Last file modification:   %s", ctime(&sb.st_mtime));
    
    fp = fopen("server.log", "w+");
    
    // take the address and open directory
	DIR *rep = opendir (address); 
	
	while ((lecture = readdir (rep))) 
      	{ 
 
         stat (lecture->d_name, &sb); 




		 if(strcmp(lecture->d_name,".")!=0 && strcmp(lecture->d_name,"..")!=0)
		 {
					time_t t = sb.st_mtime; 
					struct tm tm = *localtime (&t); 
					char s[32]; 
					strftime (s, sizeof s, "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S", &tm); 
		 
					printf ("%-14s %s", lecture->d_name, s); 
					
					fprintf(fp, "%s   %s\n", lecture->d_name, s);


					printf("\n");


		}






      } 
      
      printf("either file was created or edited again...\n");
      
      fclose(fp);
	
}

The function createLog(char...) is used at the beginning of the program and when it receives a signal from the client, it executes the modifyAttributes function.

[Salem]

> DIR *rep = opendir (address);
So where is the closedir?

[Simeonn]

Arf, didn't see that. I'll try.

Sorry and thank you

[Simeonn]

I corrected some errors (missing fclose()/closedir()) but no changes. When right clicking->properties on the modified file, the attributes are correct (even with ls -al as said above) but not using the function above.

Is there another way for showing attributes of a file? Or am I doing something wrong?

[Salem]

Well it works for me.

$ touch foo.txt ; ./a.out | grep foo.txt
foo.txt        27/03/2013 21:14:07
foo.txt        27/03/2012 22:14:07

My main sets the date back a year.

Perhaps you're thinking "w+" does something else, because what you don't get is two sets of printout.

[Simeonn]

That's strange because I also used "touch" to modify these dates but no change.

I'll try tomorrow (quite late in France )

Thank you so much.