filemtime

(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

filemtime -- Gets file modification time

Description

int filemtime ( string filename )

Returns the time the file was last modified, or FALSE in case of an error. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp, which is suitable for the date() function.

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

Tip: As of PHP 5.0.0 this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Appendix M for a listing of which wrappers support stat() family of functionality.

This function returns the time when the data blocks of a file were being written to, that is, the time when the content of the file was changed.

Example 1. filemtime() example

<?php
// outputs e.g.  somefile.txt was last modified: December 29 2002 22:16:23.

$filename = 'somefile.txt';
if (
file_exists($filename)) {
    echo
"$filename was last modified: " . date ("F d Y H:i:s.", filemtime($filename));
}
?>

See also filectime(), stat(), touch(), and getlastmod().