Access time mistery

facts ↓

mount | grep ' / '

shall show the mount options, it prints this for my Debian WSL2 install:

/dev/sdc on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,discard,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)

where relatime is a faster but less accurate version of atime…, WSL1 mounts may return noatime, where atime should be equal to mtime (not really), but it will still be modified with touch command. By default touch will update mtime and atime.

find . -maxdepth 1  -type f -amin -5

may return list of files accessed in last 5 minutes from current dir only.

ls -luathr

will return dir listing sorted by access time, newer last.

# simulate what would be deleted
find ./ -maxdepth 1 -type f -amin +60 -exec echo Would delete {} +
# carefull here, actual DELETION
# find . -maxdepth 1  -type f -amin +60 -delete

will delete files older that an hour from current dir.

To avoid unreliable atime in scripting ↓

We could mark file age by using specific touch, before atime (or mtime) related code is called, for example:

touch $file.wav && play $file.wav