File access/modification time precision

[RocketRay]

How can I increase the precision of the filesystem access and modification times? Basically, I want the zeros:

pvr.rdc.lan:/tmp 189$ls -al --time-style=full-iso yum.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 165770 2008-02-06 10:09:18.000000000 -0800 yum.list

after 10:09:18 to be real and meaningful. Or is one second the greatest precision we've got?

/apologies if this is in the wrong forum

[Cabhan]

I don't know the answer for sure. But here is what I believe is happening:

ls uses the stat() system call to figure out information about a file. From the stat(2) man page:

time_t    st_atime;   /* time of last access */

So the last access time of a file is returned as a value of type time_t. What is time_t? From the types.h(OP) man page:

time_t Used for time in seconds.

So if I am correct, then the problem is that ls is told the time only as precise as seconds. And I am not sure how to get around this.

But hopefully this helps you understand what's going on.

[RocketRay]

That's exactly what I needed to know. Thanks a bunch.