ls -i file #output is for me 68551981
debugfs -R 'stat <68551981>' /dev/sda3 # /dev/sda3 is the disk on which the file exists

#results - crtime value
[root@loft9156 ~]# debugfs -R 'stat <68551981>' /dev/sda3
debugfs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Inode: 68551981 Type: regular Mode: 0644 Flags: 0x80000
Generation: 769802755 Version: 0x00000000:00000001
User: 0 Group: 0 Size: 38973440
File ACL: 0 Directory ACL: 0
Links: 1 Blockcount: 76128
Fragment: Address: 0 Number: 0 Size: 0
 ctime: 0x526931d7:1697cce0 -- Thu Oct 24 16:42:31 2013
 atime: 0x52691f4d:7694eda4 -- Thu Oct 24 15:23:25 2013
 mtime: 0x526931d7:1697cce0 -- Thu Oct 24 16:42:31 2013
**crtime: 0x52691f4d:7694eda4 -- Thu Oct 24 15:23:25 2013**
Size of extra inode fields: 28
EXTENTS:
(0-511): 352633728-352634239, (512-1023): 352634368-352634879, (1024-2047): 288392192-288393215, (2048-4095): 355803136-355805183, (4096-6143): 357941248-357943295, (6144
-9514): 357961728-357965098

mikyra's answer is good.The fact just like what he said.

[jason@rh5 test]$ stat test.txt
 File: `test.txt'
 Size: 0 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular empty file
Device: 802h/2050d Inode: 588720 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 500/ jason) Gid: ( 500/ jason)
Access: 2013-03-14 01:58:12.000000000 -0700
Modify: 2013-03-14 01:58:12.000000000 -0700
Change: 2013-03-14 01:58:12.000000000 -0700

if you want to verify wich file was created first,you can structure your file name by appending system date when you create a series of files.

Note that if you've got your filesystem mounted with noatime for performance reasons, then the atime will likely show the creation time. Given that noatime results in a massive performance boost (by removing a disk write for every time a file is read), it may be a sensible configuration option that also gives you the results you want.

Creation date/time is normally not stored. So no, you can't.

ls -i menus.xml

94490 menus.xml
Here the number 94490 represents inode

Then do a:

df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg-root 4.0G 3.4G 408M 90% /
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 124M 27M 92M 23% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg-var 7.9G 1.1G 6.5G 15% /var

To find the mounting point of the root "/" filesystem, because the file menus.xml is on '/' that is '/dev/mapper/vg-root'

debugfs -R 'stat <94490>' /dev/mapper/vg-root

The output may be like the one below:

debugfs -R 'stat <94490>' /dev/mapper/vg-root

debugfs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Inode: 94490 Type: regular Mode: 0644 Flags: 0x0
Generation: 2826123170 Version: 0x00000000
User: 0 Group: 0 Size: 4441
File ACL: 0 Directory ACL: 0
Links: 1 Blockcount: 16
Fragment: Address: 0 Number: 0 Size: 0
ctime: 0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09:46:48 2013
atime: 0x5266e47b -- Wed Oct 23 09:47:55 2013
mtime: 0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09:46:48 2013
Size of extra inode fields: 4
Extended attributes stored in inode body: 
 selinux = "unconfined_u:object_r:usr_t:s000" (31)
BLOCKS:
(0-1):375818-375819
TOTAL: 2

Where you can see the creation time:

ctime: 0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09:46:48 2013

You can find creation time - aka birth time - using stat and also match using find.

We have these files showing last modified time:

$ ls -l --time-style=long-iso | sort -k6
total 692
-rwxrwx---+ 1 XXXX XXXX 249159 2013-05-31 14:47 Getting Started.pdf
-rwxrwx---+ 1 XXXX XXXX 275799 2013-12-30 21:12 TheScienceofGettingRich.pdf
-rwxrwx---+ 1 XXXX XXXX 25600 2015-05-07 18:52 Thumbs.db
-rwxrwx---+ 1 XXXX XXXX 148051 2015-05-07 18:55 AsAManThinketh.pdf

To find files created within a certain time frame using find as below.

Clearly, the filesystem knows about the birth time of a file:

$ find -newerBt '2014-06-13' ! -newerBt '2014-06-13 12:16:10' -ls 
20547673299906851 148 -rwxrwx--- 1 XXXX XXXX 148051 May 7 18:55 ./AsAManThinketh.pdf
1407374883582246 244 -rwxrwx--- 1 XXXX XXXX 249159 May 31 2013 ./Getting Started.pdf

We can confirm this using stat:

$ stat -c "%w %n" * | sort
2014-06-13 12:16:03.873778400 +0100 AsAManThinketh.pdf
2014-06-13 12:16:04.006872500 +0100 Getting Started.pdf
2014-06-13 12:16:29.607075500 +0100 TheScienceofGettingRich.pdf
2015-05-07 18:32:26.938446200 +0100 Thumbs.db

stat man pages explains %w:

%w time of file birth, human-readable; - if unknown

As @mikyra explained, creation date time is not stored anywhere.

All the methods above are nice, but if you want to quickly get only last modify date, you can type:

ls -lit /path

with -t option you list all file in /path odered by last modify date.

If you really want to achieve that you can use a file watcher like inotifywait.

You watch a directory and you save information about file creations in separate file outside that directory.

while true; do
 change=$(inotifywait -e close_write,moved_to,create .)
 change=$change#./ * 
 if [ "$change" = ".*" ]; then ./scriptToStoreInfoAboutFile; fi
done

As no creation time is stored, you can build your own system based on inotify.

Cited from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/50177/birth-is-empty-on-ext4/131347#131347 , the following shellscript would work to get creation time:

get_crtime() tail -1 

even better:

lsct () 
 (read a b;echo -n $a)`'>' `df "$1" 

lsct /etc

Wed Jul 20 19:25:48 2016

Another trick to add to your arsenal is the following:

$ grep -r "Copyright" /<path-to-source-files>/src

Generally speaking, if one changes a file they should claim credit in the “Copyright”. Examine the results for dates, file names, contributors and contact email.

example grep result:

/<path>/src/someobject.h: * Copyright 2007-2012 <creator's name> <creator's email>(at)<some URL>>