Is it possible to read a file's modification date with Ruby?

Question

Is it possible to read a file's modification date with Ruby? I have successfully opened a text file and captured the contents of the file with

File.open("test.txt", "r").each do |line|"

but it would be very useful to read the modification date of the file.

Cristian Ciupitu · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-20 16:21:10Z

107

File.mtime("testfile") => 2014-04-13 16:00:23 -0300

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answered May 14, 2012 at 9:39

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1 Comment

Hi! Is mtime OS agnostic?

Matzi · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-14 09:35:19Z

"Returns the modification time for the named file as a Time object."

File.mtime("testfile") #=> Tue Apr 08 12:58:04 CDT 2003

Artur INTECH · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-01 09:32:27Z

If you have already open the file (like you did in your example) it might be a better idea to use the instance method File#mtime instead:

File.new('file_path').mtime