In message , Mayayana
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| And the date-of-taking would probably be embedded in the file anyway,
| these days (and for the last several years).

Yes. But I guess we shouldn't start up the
semantic debate over "what's metadata" again.

| I can have two (or more) copies of the same file, _with the same date
| stamps_, on the same disc, as long as they're in different directories;

With the same *creation* time? I don't see how.
As soon as you make a copy, that copy gets the
creation time for when it was created. If you look
at system files you'll see the same thing. It might
be creation time of 2013 and last modified 2010.
The creation time is when it was installed. Last
modified is when it was last changed. The latter was
stored in the Windows installer so that it could be
added during install.

You are right, the Creation: and Accessed: times are now, but the
Modified: time is retained. Which gives the ridiculous (to me) concept
of a file that was last modified before it was created.

Likewise if you take a file out of a ZIP. The lastMod
time is stored because it might be relevant. But creation
time is whenever that copy of the file was taken out
of the ZIP.

The date column in my Explorer windows is the Modified one. I'm pretty
sure that's the default (I expect you can force a Created column if you
want to see one).
[]
Were all copies of all versions of the Windows kernel
created in 1992 or 1995 or some such just because there's
been a kernel32.dll file in existence during all that time?

No.


I've just experimented: the date shown in a command prompt _is_
retained, so is presumably the "modified" one. (That's under NTFS; I
don't have anything FAT to hand to see what happens there, either in
Explorer or command prompt.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

A perfectionist takes infinite pains and often gives them to others