answering my own question: TOUCH looks like what I want... gotta love BSD Unix...
NAME touch -- change file access and modification times SYNOPSIS touch [-A [-][[hh]mm]SS] [-acfhm] [-r file] [-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] file ... DESCRIPTION The touch utility sets the modification and access times of files. If any file does not exist, it is created with default permissions. By default, touch changes both modification and access times. The -a and -m flags may be used to select the access time or the modification time individually. Selecting both is equivalent to the default. By default, the timestamps are set to the current time. The -t flag explicitly spec- ifies a different time, and the -r flag specifies to set the times those of the specified file. The -A flag adjusts the values by a specified amount. ..... full definition can be had by typing MAN TOUCH I hope others can use this knowledge..sorry to raise the alarm. I'm off to write a handler, which I'll post later if anyone is interested Now I've got to find those EXIF routines, they're around somewhere.... thanks , self this is the kind of stuff that LC is so good for... -- Stephen Barncard - Sebastopol Ca. USA - mixstream.org On Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 2:36 PM Stephen Barncard <step...@barncard.com> wrote: > Hi Gang, > > I thought file date change had been a part of livecode for years, but I > can't find anything in the docs about setting the created or modified dates > in files. > I need to do this on the Mac desktop. > > Why? because several years ago $@$#$@#$@'ing dropbox, without my > permission, started changing not only filenames but DATES in a huge swath > of precious photos in a particularly dishonest way -- they wanted my free > account to fill up quickly so I'd have to "upgrade". > I know the EXIF tags still exist inside each file, but all the file dates > had been changed to the date of copying. > Dropbox has been increasingly piggish lately - not allowing more than 3 > machines on the free account. > It's a mess. This does not endear me to these greedy people. > > I have to write a custom handler to deal with this - there's no app that > can do this - I don't think. > > perhaps there's something I can call from the shell - I'd be good with > that. > > Anyone have an idea? Thanks in advance. > > sqb > -- > Stephen Barncard - Sebastopol Ca. USA - > mixstream.org > _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode