Matter of proper grammar: Files are created, they are not born, because they do not go through the process of birth.

[anoduck]

What system are you running Yazi on?

Linux X11

What terminal are you running Yazi in?

foot & termux

yazi --debug output

N/A

Describe the question

Just as a small matter of proper grammar, I was looking for how to sort files by when they were created, and it took me a minute to notice instead of using the conventional "sort by creation", Yazi uses "sort by birth time".

Either way you slice it, it is improper grammar. Birth being synonymous with the process of being born, and birthing being another word for the same process. You would not refer to the time at which yourself or someone else was being born as "birth time", you would either use "birthing time" or the more proper "time of birth". The former more associated with the process of giving birth, and the latter associated more with the time of arrival.

Regardless, the creation of files does not involve the process of giving birth, so the application of the word is improper.

It is a small thing, but maintaining standards of convention promotes productivity and efficiency.

Anything else?

No response

Checklist

• I have read all the documentation
• I have searched the existing discussions/issues

[sxyazi]

Using "birth time" rather than "creation time" is to stay consistent with the sorting field it uses, btime:

yazi/yazi-config/preset/keymap-default.toml

Line 114 in a1fb206

{ on = [ ",", "b" ], run = [ "sort btime --reverse=no", "linemode btime" ], desc = "Sort by birth time" },

In *Nix, "birth time" is commonly used to denote a file's creation time, for example, when you run the stat command you can see a similar term:

$ stat /
  File: /
  Size: 4096      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 253,2	Inode: 2           Links: 18
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2025-08-26 08:09:40.875138364 -0400
Modify: 2024-12-09 18:09:01.540001518 -0500
Change: 2024-12-09 18:09:01.540001518 -0500
 Birth: 2023-02-17 06:51:01.000000000 -0500

I agree that "time of birth" sounds more natural in English, but changing "Sort by birth time" to "Sort by time of birth" feels a bit odd, and a quick search on GitHub shows:

• 992 results for the keyword "by birth time"
• only 24 results for "by time of birth"

It seems the former is more common in the technical field at least, so there are currently no plans to change it, but thank you for the suggestion anyway!

[anoduck]

* only [24 results](https://github.com/search?q=%22by+time+of+birth%22&type=code) for "by time of birth"

Files are created. So you would use "creation time", "creation_time", "created_at", "creation_timestamp" or abbreviated "ctime". "Creation time" has 1.5 million mentions on Github. The search here

POSIX Standards: In file systems compliant with POSIX, files have attributes such as modification time, access time, and creation time (sometimes referred to as birth time in certain contexts). "Creation time" is the preferred terminology in documentation and discussions regarding file metadata.

Java Time API: In Java's time API, methods for obtaining the creation time of an object may use the term "creation" or variations like Instant.now(), where the emphasis is on the moment of creation.

SQL (Structured Query Language): In SQL databases, the column storing the creation timestamp is commonly named creation_time or created_at. This practice is standard among many database management systems (DBMS) like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle.

In computer science and software engineering, both are used, but "creation_time" (or its variants) is vastly more common and considered more proper/standard than "birth_time".

Here’s a quick breakdown with evidence from real-world usage:

Term	Typical usage & popularity	Examples in major systems/projects
creation_time	The dominant standard	- Linux/Unix: st_ctime (status change), but actual file creation is often stored as creation_time (ext4, NTFS) - Windows NTFS: CreationTime - Git: git log --format:%c uses authorDate, but many tools expose creation_time - Google Protocol Buffers style guide: recommends create_time - Kubernetes API: metadata.creationTimestamp - Cloud APIs (AWS, GCP, Azure): almost universally creation_time or create_time
birth_time	Rare, mostly limited to specific filesystems	- BSD/macOS: st_birthtime (introduced in BSD 4.4, exposed on macOS as file "Date Added" or birth time) - Some filesystems (ZFS, Btrfs, APFS) support a distinct birthtime/crtime - Occasionally seen in forensic tools

Why "creation_time" wins in practice:

1. Semantic clarity – "Creation" directly and unambiguously means "the moment this object/resource was created". "Birth" is more metaphorical and slightly anthropomorphic.
2. Cross-platform consistency – Windows, Linux (most tools), cloud providers, databases, and programming language libraries overwhelmingly use "creation".
3. Style guides – Major style guides agree:
   • Google API Design Guide: create_time
   • Microsoft REST API Guidelines: createdAt or creationTime
   • Kubernetes, OpenAPI, protobufs → creationTimestamp / create_time
4. Searchability & prior art – If you search GitHub or documentation, "creation_time" returns orders of magnitude more hits.

When "birth_time" is acceptable:

Only when you are specifically exposing the low-level filesystem st_birthtime on BSD/macOS-derived systems (e.g., a macOS-specific file manager or forensic tool). Even then, many libraries rename it to creation_time for consistency.

Verdict

Use creation_time (or create_time, created_at, creation_timestamp depending on your naming convention).

"birth_time" sounds quirky and will raise eyebrows in code reviews outside of very niche BSD/macOS contexts.