Why does "file" change the creation time on some Unix systems?

[Greg Pasquariello]

In article <2268 at faline.bellcore.com> hill at faline.UUCP (Chris Hill) writes:
>In article <> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>>If what you say is completely true, you must be running a pretty bizarre
>>version of UNIX; no version I know of maintains the *creation* time of a
>>file. 
>
>If so, to what "creation" time does the -c option of ls refer?
>
>Chris Hill
                                                

The "creation" time refers to the last modified time.  If the last time the
file was modified was at creation, well then it really is the creation time.
However, if the file was modified since creation, the two times will not be
the same.  The inode doesn't even save the creation time, so it is not
available.

(Regardless of what the header says, I am Greg Pasquariello at
...!att!picuxa!gpasq)