date creation with Image::Exiftools or Date::Handler - date

Question

I'm trying to merge all dirs containing pictures having different timeZone, in a single dir, uniform file's names with a same format (Hungarian style yyyymmdd_hhmmss) eliminating huge of duplicates, at once.
I was looking for modules (over the stat statement which return only the epoch (stat(file))[9]) that can read the file's creation date, not the last modification or access date.
I fount Immage::ExifTools seem to be the effective and easiest to list.
I noted that after several cycling into the dir the module stop to extract the correct date/time output stuck in a monotone identical wrong date/time value for the next over files. Here is the list and below one of pictures that get me into this trouble: more precisely file's property on win10 give a creation date of 20140626 12:16 pm; running instead the routine I obtain 20021208_120000.
foreach $img(#img){
next if -l $img;
$img =~ /.+(\..+$)/;
$ext = $1;
# %ENV;
$exif=new Image::ExifTool;
$exif->ExtractInfo($dir.$img);
$for = $exif->GetValue('CreateDate');
$for =~ s/$space/\_/g;
$for =~ s/\://g;
$for = '_'.$for;
$size = (stat($dir.$img))[7];
# $date = Date->new($date[9]);
# #data = $date->array;
#tie my %date, 'Date::Tie', utc_epoch => $date{$date[9]}; #tz => $date{tz};
#my $date = Date::Tie->new( epoch => $date[9] );
%date;
# $for = IMG.$for.$ext;
if (!$all{'IMG'.$for.$ext}){
$all{'IMG'.$for.$ext}= $size ;
rename $dir.$img, $dir.'IMG'.$for.$ext;
print "rename $dir.$img, $dir.'IMG'.$for.$ext\n";
}elsif($all{'IMG'.$for.$ext} == $size){
unlink $dir.$img;
print "Deleting $dir.$img\n";
}
Checking the files properties involved, the "wrong" ones seems to have the same properties "working" ones: both working and wrong state the properties of : creation/acquisition date, modification date and last access date..
I can't understand where the module fault.
Have you any recommendation ? Any different module to use ?
Thanks
Simon

Answer 1

On Windows you can use Win32API::File::Time to read and modify the file creation time:
use feature qw(say);
use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32API::File::Time qw(GetFileTime SetFileTime);
use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
my $dir = tempdir( CLEANUP => 1 );
my $fn = 'test.txt';
open (my $fh, '>', $fn) or die "Could not open file '$fn': $!";
say $fh "Foobar";
close $fh;
print_file_times($fn);
my ($atime, $mtime, $ctime) = GetFileTime ($fn);
SetFileTime ($fn, undef, undef, $ctime-180);
print_file_times($fn);
sub print_file_times {
my ($fn) = #_;
my ($atime, $mtime, $ctime) = GetFileTime ($fn);
say "File: $fn:";
say " File access time: $atime";
say " File modification time: $mtime";
say " File creation time: $ctime";
return $ctime;
}
Output:
File: test.txt:
File access time: 1614640101
File modification time: 1614640101
File creation time: 1614639958
File: test.txt:
File access time: 1614640101
File modification time: 1614640101
File creation time: 1614639778