utime(3)

utime3

Set file times

Usage

#include <utime.h>

int

utime(const char *file, const struct utimbuf *timep);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

This interface is obsoleted by utimensat(2) because it is not accurate to fractions of a second.

The utime() function sets the access and modification times of the named file from the actime and modtime fields of the struct utimbuf pointed at by timep.

If the times are specified (the timep argument is non-NULL) the caller must be the owner of the file or be the super-user.

If the times are not specified (the timep argument is NULL) the caller must be the owner of the file, have permission to write the file, or be the super-user.

Errors

The utime() function may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for the library function utimes(2).

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 43 times.

  1. 2.0.5–2.1.7.1
  2. 2.2.2–3.4
  3. 3.5–3.5.1
  4. 4.0
  5. 4.1–4.2
  6. 4.3
  7. 4.4
  8. 4.5–4.11
  9. 5.0–5.3
  10. 5.4–5.5
  11. 6.0–6.3
  12. 6.4
  13. 7.0
  14. 7.1
  15. 7.2
  16. 7.3
  17. 7.4
  18. 8.0
  19. 8.1
  20. 8.2
  21. 8.3
  22. 8.4
  23. 9.0
  24. 9.1
  25. 9.2
  26. 9.3
  27. 10.0
  28. 10.1
  29. 10.2
  30. 10.3
  31. 10.4
  32. 11.0
  33. 11.1
  34. 11.2
  35. 11.3
  36. 11.4
  37. 12.0
  38. 12.1
  39. 12.2
  40. 12.3
  41. 12.4
  42. 13.0–13.2
  43. 13.3–14.5
  44. 15.0–16.0

Standards

The utime() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (“POSIX.1”).

History

A utime() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.