When a directory is viewed in dolphin, files with certain extensions have their atimes updated. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. disable all previews in dolphin 2. create an empty file with .ogg extension 3. navigate dolphin to the containing directory OBSERVED RESULT The atime of the file has been updated. EXPECTED RESULT No action was taken to view/open/otherwise access the file, so the atime should not change. Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20210329 KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.80.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2 Kernel Version: 5.11.6-1-default ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Other affected extensions: .out The same behaviour can also be observed in Konqueror, but not in Thunar, Nautilus, PCManFM, PCManFM-Qt or QtFM
Mimetype probing might require accessing files to look for binary markers in the file itself, which I expect is what causes this behavior. I've checked and couldn't find where the POSIX spec says that atime changes require any sort of view or option action. In fact the only relevant bit of information is [1] > struct timespec st_atim Last data access timestamp. Opening the file to detect its mimetype is certainly data access. This seems consistent behavior. [1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sys_stat.h.html