I need to find out the creation date of a file.
The class File has only the methode 
lastModified()

What about the following methods?
getCreationDate()
getModificationDate()
getAccessDate()
(Review ID: 26451)
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Posted Date : 2005-08-25 16:20:09.0

N/A

In order to add these we must first ascertain that they all make sense across
all platforms -- which seems unlikely.  --   xxxxx@xxxxx   3/23/1998
This feature has been addressed by the new file system API defined by JSR-203.
Posted Date : 2009-02-16 13:37:00.0

I just need to find some description of the format that the lastModified()
method returns to me, on all the most used platforms ... where can I get this ?

My main desire in wanting this resolved is to have
at least the lastModified() method return a normal
Java date/timestamp, i.e. similar to System.currentTimeMillis()
or better yet a Date or Calendar object.
The other time/date attributes associated with a file would
be nice to complete the attribute list normally associated
with a file.  It could also be argued that is is unlikely
that all platforms even support the concept of "last modified."

of course they make sense on all platforms.
if you only do stuff that *can be implemented*
on all platforms then you throw out a lot of
good stuff. some platforms are just deficient.
suggest you define that return 0 (long) or null
(Date) means "not implemented" then implement
where you can.

Finding out the creation date is supported on most OSes, if we boil everything
down to the lowest common denominator we won't have anything left.
I would rank this as a strong contender for the next release, don't forget the
ability to also set these. If you can get something you should be able to set
it.

missing also other attributes like System and Archive
andre_nicolai@hotmail.com

I've posted a Win32 JNI work-around in the Java forums:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?
forum=31&thread=409921&start=0&range=100#1800193

Note that a working patch has been provided to implement getLastAccessed() in bug 6314708. 

The evaluation's argument is specious. There is nothing to prevent the specification for these methods saying "will return 0L where the underlying native filesystem does not provide this information".  Other parts of the Java API use UnsupportedOperationException to communicate this, but in the case of this information, returning 0 is perfectly acceptable.  [(mail address withheld) Colm Smyth, http://colmsmyth.blogspot.com]