On UN*X, st_ctime is the last status change time, not the creation time.

That's the time the file's inode last changed, so size changes,
permission changes, etc. affect it.  It's *not* the time the file was
created; most UN*Xes don't provide that.  Newer versions of FreeBSD,
NetBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS do, but other UN*Xes don't appear to.

On Windows, at least according to Microsoft's documentation, st_ctime
*is* the creation time.  Hopefully that's not the result of confusion on
the part of somebody at Microsoft.

Change-Id: I20743703f6ef66e40dff9004dc91bed46af6fad0
Reviewed-on: https://code.wireshark.org/review/18378
Reviewed-by: Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/ui/qt/file_set_dialog.cpp b/ui/qt/file_set_dialog.cpp
index 525d446e7d..f62f8ce8c9 100644
--- a/ui/qt/file_set_dialog.cpp
+++ b/ui/qt/file_set_dialog.cpp
@@ -103,9 +103,19 @@ void FileSetDialog::addFile(fileset_entry *entry) {
     created = nameToDate(entry->name);
     if(created.length() < 1) {
         /* if this file doesn't follow the file set pattern, */
-        /* use the creation time of that file */
+        /* use the creation time of that file if available */
         /* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 */
-        created = QDateTime::fromTime_t(entry->ctime).toLocalTime().toString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
+        /*
+         * macOS provides 0 if the file system doesn't support the
+         * creation time; FreeBSD provides -1.
+         *
+         * If this OS doesn't provide the creation time with stat(),
+         * it will be 0.
+         */
+        if (entry->ctime > 0)
+            created = QDateTime::fromTime_t(entry->ctime).toLocalTime().toString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
+        else
+            created = "Not available";
     }
 
     modified = QDateTime::fromTime_t(entry->mtime).toLocalTime().toString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");