Does fileatime() "access" the file?

Question

I was wondering whether or not fileatime counts as having accessed the file?

I'm assuming not as the function should really only need to access the filesystem metadata for the file rather than the file itself - is this correct?

Answer 1

Yes it has to be accessing the filesystem, because only the filesystem has the modtime, creationtime and accesstime saved.

Answer 2

That is correct. The underlying stat() call does not modify the file metadata.