On Tue, Jan 02, 2001 at 03:14:34AM -0500, will trillich wrote: > > Is it possible to grep a ton of files without modifying their > > date/timestamps? > > Currently if I use grep, it changes the access time of all files touched, > > which causes mutt to lose track of the folders which have new mail (I guess > > it > > looks at the timestamp last modified and last accessed to figure this out). > > Occasionally I do want to include the mail folders in my greps, so bypassing > > the "mail" directory is not a solution. > > whoa. isn't there a difference between MODIFIED and ACCESSED? > doing "pager < file" should modify the ACCESSED timestamp, > but not the MODIFIED timestamp, right? or am i in the wrong > universe?
They are different. The way the quick mailcheck works I believe is that, among other things, you check whether modify time > access time. This is because when mail is appended to your spool file, the modify time stamp is updated, but not the access one. The access time stamp is then modified when you actually look at the spool file (with some sort of disk/file "read" operation). -- Maciej Kalisiak [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mac
