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Keep The Creation aka Birth Timestamp When Copying A File On A Mac In Python

NOTE : I'm not sure this is accurate. It looked like it when I first tested it, but I'm not sure now.

Leaving here until I can investigate further.

This is how you can make a copy of a file and maintain its "birth" time.

Note : I'm pretty sure you need XCode to get the [TODO: Code shorthand span ] command.

NOTE : 

# this is the command to get the birth time of the inode
stat -f "%B" file_name
# and this is for the file modified time:
stat -f "%m" file_name

TODO : Formatting

python 
import subprocess
import time

def copy_file_keeping_creation_date(source_path, dest_path):
    # TODO: Add error handling in all this
    creation_time = subprocess.run(['stat', '-f', '%B', src_path], stdout=subprocess.
PIPE).stdout.decode('utf-8')
    date_string = time.strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S', time.localtime(int(creation_time)))
    copy2(src_path, dest_path)
    response = subprocess.run(['SetFile', '-d', date_string, dest_path])
    print(response)
    # TODO: Make a better response

Notes :

- copy2 copies the most metadata of the possible python options, but still doesn't do the birth time. - [TODO: Code shorthand span ] doesn't copy it either. - TODO : show examples from [TODO: Code shorthand span ] command - TODO : put in details about the four times available for files.

links :

- https : //apple.stackexchange.com/a/99599/7828 - https : //stackoverflow.com/a/56009590/102401

TODO : Look at adding an answer to this one :

https : //stackoverflow.com/questions/56008797/how - to - change - the - creation - date - of - file - using - python - on - a - mac

TODO : Look at this answer and see if there's something in that pathlib that can be used for finding the data instead of using [TODO: Code shorthand span ] - https : //stackoverflow.com/a/52858040/102401

TODO : Look at [TODO: Code shorthand span ] to see what it perserves. According to the comment on this answer (https : //stackoverflow.com/a/17685271/102401) that's what copy2 is supposed to do. Check it with [TODO: Code shorthand span ] and see if it keeps the birth timestamp.