How do I get the time a file was last modified in Python?

Question

Assuming the file exists (using os.path.exists(filename) to first make sure that it does), how do I display the time a file was last modified? This is on Linux if that makes any difference.

Answer 1

os.stat()

import os
filename = "/etc/fstab"
statbuf = os.stat(filename)
print "Modification time:",statbuf.st_mtime

Unfortunately I don't think Linux records the creation time. (At least it isn't available from os.stat).

Answer 2

>>> import os
>>> f = os.path.getmtime('test1.jpg')
>>> f
1223995325.0

since the beginning of (epoch)