How to copy a file in unix without altering its last modified time?

Question

If I copy some file from some place to another using cp, the timestamp on the copied file is set to the time of the copy.

Is there some way to avoid this?

I need to copy files without altering their timestamps.

Answer 1

cp -p does the trick.

Answer 2

There are three times on a Unix filesystem, the access time (atime), the modification time (mtime), and the inode change time (ctime). You can change the access time and the modification time with the touch program, for example

cp orig copy
touch -r orig copy

However, you cannot change the inode change time.