Python: Get last modified information of a file

Last update on April 22 2025 12:47:23 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

38. File Last Modified Info

Write a Python program to get the last modified information of a file.

Sample Solution:

Python Code:

# Import the os and time modules
import os, time

# Define a function called last_modified_fileinfo which retrieves the last modified date and time of a file
def last_modified_fileinfo(filepath):
    # Get the file status using os.stat() function
    filestat = os.stat(filepath)
    # Get the last modified date and time in local time
    date = time.localtime((filestat.st_mtime))

    # Extract year, month, and day from the date
    year = date[0]
    month = date[1]
    day = date[2]
    # Extract hour, minute, and second
    hour = date[3]
    minute = date[4]
    second = date[5]
    
    # Year
    strYear = str(year)[0:]

    # Month
    if (month <=9):
        strMonth = '0' + str(month)
    else:
        strMonth = str(month)

    # Date
    if (day <=9):
        strDay = '0' + str(day)
    else:
        strDay = str(day)

    # Format the date and time as a string in the format "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS"
    return (strYear+"-"+strMonth+"-"+strDay+" "+str(hour)+":"+str(minute)+":"+str(second))

# Print an empty line
print()
# Print the last modified date and time of the file 'test.txt'
print(last_modified_fileinfo('test.txt'))
# Print an empty line
print()

Output:

2017-04-19 15:15:52

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

This code imports the modules "os" and "time".
It defines a function named "last_modified_fileinfo()" which retrieves the last modified date and time of a file specified by 'filepath'.
Inside the "last_modified_fileinfo()" function:

It gets the file status using the "os.stat()" function, which returns a tuple containing several pieces of information about the file, including the last modified time.
It converts the last modified time to local time using "time.localtime()".
It extracts the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second from the obtained date.
It formats the date and time into a string in the format "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS".

It prints the last modified date and time of the file 'test.txt' by calling the "last_modified_fileinfo()" function.

Flowchart:

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a Python program to fetch and display the last modified timestamp of a specified file in a human-readable format.
Write a Python script to get the last modified date of a file and then calculate how many days ago it was modified.
Write a Python program to obtain the file modification time and then compare it with the current time to compute the file’s age in hours.
Write a Python function to retrieve a file's last modified time and then format it into "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" using the os module.

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