Bug 57105

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User-Agent: Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-12 i586)

Description of problem:
This is a feature since the man page clearly says that -H uses the file
change
time.  However, the change time is the Wrong Time to use, since it is
updated when
any file attributes are changed.  For instance, if the file is backed up
using
tar --atime-preserve, the ctime of the file becomes the time when the
backup was
done.   Don't try to tell me this isn't BROKEN!  Also, pr uses mtime (as
does enscript)
and the man page sort of implies that mpage should behave like pr, since
this is what
it uses by default under -p.

Version- mpage-2.5.1-5


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a short text file (or use an old one lying around).  Assume it is
named foo.txt.
2. Change its ctime without changing mtime:
       chmod +x foo.txt ; chmod -x foo.txt
3. Look at ctime and mtime; they will be different.
       ls -lc foo.txt ; ls -l foo.txt
4. Format the file using mpage and give output a header
       mpage -H1 foo.txt | lpr
	

Actual Results:  The time in the output header is ctime, not mtime.

Expected Results:  Since mpage conforms to its man page, the expected
results after reading the man
page are the same as the actual results.  However, the expected (and
desired) results
before reading the man page were that the time in the output header should
be mtime.

Additional info:

I did not find any way to tell mpage to select mtime as an alternative to
ctime.
The only workaround is manually put the date in the -h header, or use -p
which unfortunately also puts irrelevant "pr -l66 -w80" in the header.
I would be happy with an additional command-line option to select mtime.