log4j-finder will change acces time of a jar file

[anepieter]

I know that acces time of a file only gives a mere indication but ik could help a little bit. On linux (and aix) you could use the touch command to save the timestamp in a temporary file. And restore it afterwards.
like:

save_command = "touch -r '{}' /tmp/timestamp.save"
rest_command = "touch -r /tmp/timestamp.save '{}'"

run(save_command.format(<jar_file>))
<do the check>
run(rest_command.format(<jar_file>))

I tried to patch the code with this but I can't. And I don't really now if it is a good idea to do that anyway
FYI i wrote a run function in python.

[yunzheng]

Python has an API called os.utime that can set access time on files I believe, of course you will need to have the correct user permissions on the file to be able to do that. This is better than calling subprocesses.

[anepieter]

True. Your solution is also more portable.
My solution has another problem. The /tmp/ filesystem may be mounted with the noaitme option on AIX. This prevents updating the atime from a file in the filesystem. I don't know if touch will update the atime in this case.
linux should have a similar option I suppose.