How to get the file creation date of a file in C++

By Ankur Sinha

In this tutorial, We are going to learn about How to get the file creation date of a file in C++, and also, we are going to find out about other information such as its size, device, and last modification time.

Now to find the creation date and other details of a file we are going to use a header file <sys/stat.h>.

Below is the given implementation:

get the file creation date of a file in C++ along with other details

//Program to find out the creation date and other file info

//Importing header files
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <cerrno>
#include <cstring>

//Driver function
int main(int argc, char** argv )
{
   struct stat fileInfo;

   if (argc < 2) {
      std::cout << "Usage: fileinfo <file name>\n";
      return(EXIT_FAILURE);
   }

   if (stat(argv[1], &fileInfo) != 0) {  // Use stat() to get the info
      std::cerr << "Error: " << strerror(errno) << '\n';
      return(EXIT_FAILURE);
   }

   std::cout << "Type:         : ";
   if ((fileInfo.st_mode & S_IFMT) == S_IFDIR) { // From sys/types.h
      std::cout << "Directory\n";
   } else {
      std::cout << "File\n";
   }

  // Printing all the details related to the file
   std::cout << "Size          : " <<
      fileInfo.st_size << '\n';               // Size in bytes
   std::cout << "Device        : " <<
      (char)(fileInfo.st_dev + 'A') << '\n';  // Device number
   std::cout << "Created       : " <<
      std::ctime(&fileInfo.st_ctime);         // Creation time
   std::cout << "Modified      : " <<
      std::ctime(&fileInfo.st_mtime);         // Last mod time
}