fileatime
Fileatime, in the context of Unix-like operating systems, refers to the access time attribute of a file. It is the timestamp that records the last moment a file was read or accessed, and it is typically stored in the file’s inode as the atime field (often exposed via the stat system call as st_atime).
Conceptually, atime tracks when a file was last used, complementing other timestamps such as mtime (modification
Performance considerations have led to the adoption of mount options that influence atime updates. The noatime
Filesystem support varies, but most modern Linux filesystems (such as ext4, XFS, btrfs) support atime and these
See also: atime, mtime, ctime, relatime, noatime, strictatime, lazytime.