title: ctime, atime, and mtime - How to interpret them?
body: <p>I am writing a program in Python that requires comparison of atime, mtime, and ctime of several directories. For this purpose I am using <code>os.stat("my_directory/")</code>. What I get as a result is a string which includes these times. For a sample directory I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>st_atime=1418911410L
  st_mtime=1418911410L
  st_ctime=1404656050L
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My problem is that I have some confusion with these numbers. I would like to know if these numbers are convertible to actual time? or, if one number (lets say ctime) is smaller than the other (like atime), does it mean that ctime is earlier than atime or later? I have searched many websites to learn this, but my attempts went without a success. Could anyone help me? thanks in advance. </p>