Getatime

Getatime is a function name used in some Unix-like environments to obtain the last access time (atime) of a file or path. The term atime refers to the timestamp of the most recent read or access operation on the file, in contrast to mtime (modification time) and ctime (change time). Getatime is not part of the POSIX standard, and its availability and behavior depend on the specific C library or programming language in use.

When available, getatime typically returns a timestamp representing the file’s last access time, often as a time value such as time_t or a floating-point number of seconds since the epoch. The exact return type and error handling vary by implementation. It is important to note that modern file systems and kernels may delay or disable atime updates for performance reasons, via mount options like noatime or relatime, which can cause getatime to report older values than when the file was actually read.

For portable access to file timestamps, POSIX-compliant code generally relies on the stat family of interfaces, which expose st_atime (and, in newer interfaces, st_atim or similar) rather than a separate getatime function. The statx system call in Linux provides high-resolution access times and extended metadata in a standardized way.

In languages that provide convenience wrappers, getatime may appear as a dedicated function or be accessed through a standard library path. For example, Python’s os.path.getatime(path) returns the access time as a floating-point number of seconds since the epoch. Other environments may offer analogous wrappers or require direct use of stat-based calls to retrieve atime.

See also: stat, st_atime, st_atim, statx, noatime, relatime.