Ruby - Get File Modification Time

1. Introduction

When working with files, there are times when it's useful to know when a file was last modified. This information can help in tasks such as backups, synchronization, or just understanding data flow in an application. Ruby, through its File class, provides a straightforward method to retrieve the last modification time of a file. This post will guide you through a Ruby program to fetch a file's last modification time.

2. Program Steps

1. Specify the path of the file you wish to inspect.

2. Use the File.mtime method to get the modification time of the file.

3. Display the modification time.

3. Code Program

# Specify the path of the file you want to check
file_path = "sample_file.txt"
# Fetch the file's modification time
modification_time = File.mtime(file_path)
# Print the modification time
puts "The file #{file_path} was last modified on: #{modification_time}"

Output:

The file sample_file.txt was last modified on: 2023-01-01 10:10:10 +0000

Explanation:

1. file_path = "sample_file.txt": Here, we define the path or name of the file we want to inspect.

2. File.mtime(file_path): The mtime method from the File class returns a Time object representing the last time the specified file was modified.

3. puts "The file #{file_path} was last modified on: #{modification_time}": We then display this information to the user.


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