[Haskell-cafe] Behaviour of System.Directory.getModificationTime

[Arnaud Bailly]

Hello,
I am writing  a program which scans a bunch of directories to detect
changes (added, modified, deleted files).
To detect modification, I would like to use getModification, doing
something like the following:

-- |Stores last modified timestamp of the file
-- Yes, I come from Java...
type HashMap = M.Map FilePath ClockTime

data (Show a, Eq a) => Edit a = Mod a
                              | Add a
                              | Del a
                      deriving (Eq,Show)

checkChanges :: [String] -> HashMap -> IO ([Edit FilePath], HashMap)
checkChanges [fs] m = do
    addedFilesList <- lsRecursive fs
    timestamps <- mapM getModificationTime addedFilesList
    let allts = zip addedFilesList timestamps
    let ret   = (findDeletedFiles allts.updateScannedFiles allts) ([],m)
    return ret

-- | Returns an updated map and a list of modified/added/deleted files
updateScannedFiles :: [(FilePath,ClockTime)] -> ([Edit FilePath],
HashMap) -> ([Edit FilePath], HashMap)
updateScannedFiles []                r           = r
updateScannedFiles ((path,ts):files) (updates,m) =
  case M.lookup path m of
    Nothing  -> updateScannedFiles files ((Add path:updates), M.insert
path ts m)
    Just ts' -> if ts' < ts then
                  updateScannedFiles files ((Mod path:updates),
M.adjust (const ts) path m)
                else
                  updateScannedFiles files (updates, m)

-- omitting findDeletedFiles which is obvious and works

I got the following test case that fails:

    "recursively marks changed files as modified" `for`
    do complexFileSetup   -- create a small FS tree with 3 files
       root <- tempDir
       state <- checkChanges [root] M.empty
       writeFile (root </> "subdir" </> "cFile.txt")  "this is another
toast"
       checkChanges [root] (snd state)
    >>= (\r -> assertEqual "there should be 1 changed file in 3 files"
1 ((length.modified.fst) r)),

In words: the getModificationTime of the overwritten file appears
identical before and after the write. What am I doing wrong ?
BTW, I checked the content of the file which has been correctly updated.

Thanks for your help
Arnaud