I’d like to be able to change the creation dates for a folder full of files, but this doesn’t seem to be posssible using the following approach…
tell application "Finder"
set the creation date of theFile to date "Saturday, January 1, 2000 12:00:00 AM"
end tell
The Finder returns an error that it can’t set the creation date of the alias (for whatever file has been selected for theFile variable).I’ve been able to use the exact same approach for changing the modification date so I suspect that changing the creation date may be "illegal."Any ideas on how to achieve this goal? Thanks.
Its not illegal, just a little risky. I use a similar script to change modification dates before I upload via FTP. Use this script for drag and drop (folders and nested files withing folders, etc.)
If you wish to get a README with it, email me
on open (thelist)
(*open receives a list of documents that were dragged onto the droplet's icon, and passes
the document names one at a time to the handleTheName routine. *)
set nowDate to (current date) as date
set MacintoshCreationDate to date "Tuesday, January 24, 1984 9:00:00 AM"
set fileCount to 0 as integer
display dialog ("Enter Creation Date ") ¬
default answer (nowDate as string) buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2
set tempDate to (text returned of result) as text
try
set modDate to date tempDate
set MacCreatDate to date MacintoshCreationDate
if modDate < MacCreatDate then
beep
display dialog "The first Macintosh wasn't built yet!" buttons {"Cancel"} ¬
default button 1 with icon 0 giving up after 5
else if modDate > nowDate then
beep
display dialog "Creation date cannot be in the future!" buttons {"Cancel"} ¬
default button 1 with icon 0 giving up after 5
else
repeat with theItems in thelist
set fileCount to handleTheName(theItems as text, modDate, fileCount)
end repeat
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "The Creation Date for " & (fileCount as string) ¬
& " File(s) was changed to " & return & (ASCII character 34) & ¬
(modDate as string) & (ASCII character 34) ¬
buttons {"OK"} default button 1 giving up after 12
end tell
end if
on error errorMsg number errorNum
display dialog errorMsg
end try
end open
on handleTheName(thisItem, modDate, fileCount)
(*handleTheName determines whether the name passed to it is a file or a folder. If it's
a file, just tweak the date. If it's a folder, make sure the folder name ends with a colon,
then get a list of the folder contents. For each item in the folder, prepend the
parent folder pathname, then recursively call handleTheName to deal with it. *)
if folder of (info for file thisItem) is true then
set theFolderName to thisItem
if the last character of theFolderName is not ":" then set theFolderName ¬
to theFolderName & ":"
set theOtherList to list folder theFolderName
repeat with theIconName in theOtherList
set fileCount to handleTheName(theFolderName & theIconName, modDate, fileCount)
end repeat
else
set fileCount to tweakTheDocument(thisItem, modDate, fileCount)
return (fileCount)
end if
end handleTheName
on tweakTheDocument(theFileName, modDate, fileCount)
(*tweakTheDocument checks to see if the passed-in file is any of a number of common files
that can't be opened. Otherwise, the creation dates and/or modification dates are changed. *)
set theExclusionList to {"APPL", "INIT", "PRER", "scri", "RDEV", "cdev", ¬
"CDEV", "dfil", "DFIL", "ffil", "FFIL", "STAK"}
set theFileType to the file type of (info for file theFileName)
if theExclusionList does not contain theFileType then
try
set fileInfo to (info for theFileName)
tell application "Finder"
activate
set creation date of fileInfo to modDate
apply catalog info fileInfo to theFileName
end tell
set fileCount to (fileCount + 1)
return (fileCount)
on error errorMsg number errorNum
end try
end if
end tweakTheDocument
If you have access to an OS X machine I have a script that can change creation and modification dates, but it requires OS X and Apple’s Developer Tools
i am looking for similar script that change creation date
i tried all three script with different variation but could not get it work
i working on OS X.2.8
I have never found a Script to use to change the creation date of a file or folder but I have found an applicaton which does allow changing the creation date of a file or folder. It’s name is “Xray” & shareware but it works.
See: