Hi everyone,

I analyze the way KDE applications (Dolphin for example) modify file timestamps during different file manipulation (creating a file, deleting a file).

To be clearer it is for example to know which timestamps (M, A, C, B) are updated when creating a file or a folder.

Dolphin and most KDE applications are built using the KDE framework which itself is built on top of Qt.

So I first analyzed the timestamp modification through Qt. Then I analyzed the timestamp modification through Dolphin and found some differences overall.

To understand the origin I looked for the library in the KDE framework that allows to manipulate the files. So I could see that the KDE applications use the KIO library that already offers everything necessary for the different file manipulation operations.

I would like to know, if during the different file manipulations (creation, deletion, copy, ... etc) this library manually updates the timestamps.

"manually"? are you sure you mean that ?

well it's a bit of a language abuse, but basically what I mean is that in addition to the changes that had to be made by the Qt library, there are probably other timestamp updates by the KIO library itself.

I assume that KIO also uses Qt from behind, which itself makes system calls to perform these file operations.

I already know how Qt modifies timestamps, but when I perform the same operation from Dolphin I get slightly different results.

for example : the creation of a file named tmp.txt in a folder named parent/

creation of the file with Dolphin
parent/
MAC.
tmp.txt
MACB

creation of the file with Qt
parent/
M.C.
tmp.txt
MACB

I think this should go to the Dolphin sub-forum, moving thread.