Re: Why isn't the "last access time" part of the filesystem library?

What to do if the filesystem doesn't attach any time at all to a file? Fail at compile time? Always return some date in the past, like January 1, 1900, that is impossible as a real mdate (since computers were not invented yet) and so can be relied upon to indicate "no date available"?

Sounds splendid and preferable to compile time failure. Many thanks to you and Peter for adding the clarity that I could not.