Is there a way i can find out which matlab files were opened on a certain date

Hey guys, I am trying to recreate chain of flow of data analysis that was done by someone before me and I am stuck. There are certain files being generated by some script which are the final link in this chain but i don't know which script is generating these files. I know from the date they were created which is March of 2016. Is there a way i can find which files, matlab files specifically, were opened on a certain date?

Any help would be appreciated.

[dpb]

It's up to your OS as to whether the access time is preserved and shown with the directory command or not. I'm presuming you're talking about when a specific m-file was executed, not when it was last modified.

There are undoubtedly other system-service routines that could monitor for access that could probably uncover that information but I don't have specifics on any one; hadn't ever tried such a thing.

OTOH, you might try seeing if you were to set files in a directory to hidden, maybe the system would fail on an access and you could eventually track something down???

Some more specifics of what is run and what you do know might help...surely there's a top level script/function you do know that you can then read code and follow the bread crumbs???

[Sanwal Yousaf]

Yes i have tried using all that i know of what to expect in the file to search for it and i have been at it for weeks and i have had no success which is why i was thinking of using a new or a different way

[dpb]

"...using all that i know of what to expect in the file to search for it" doesn't mean anything to me I can relate to.

Can you run the analysis and get new results or is this a set of results from some time back that are just sitting around with no connection to anything any longer? IOW, can you currently generate a new set of similar files from this analysis? If that is so, it should be possible to read the code and figure out what does what to whom.

OTOH, if you can't generate a new set from what code you have that you do run now and these are just data files from some previous time there is no way that there's any direct connection to output written by the content or time stamp on that file. It's quite possible the files could have just been created by the previous occupant of the workstation at the command line and never did have any script or function associated with them.