Retaining file modification times

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <9105211828.AA12327 at fozzie.nrl.navy.mil> phillips at FOZZIE.NRL.NAVY.MIL (Lee Phillips) writes:

>I want to do something to a file without changing its modification
>time.  I suppose I can write a script to get the time from ls, do the
>modification, then restore the time (after converting it to numerical
>format) with /usr/5bin/touch, but I'm hoping that there is an easier
>way. (Csh solutions preferred.) 

Perl is probably the only utility that has stat and utime implimented
in a way that is directly usable.  Other choices would requre C programming
or lots of contortions.

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us