Question: I am new to PHP and am writing a PHP script that contains `a module which reads the file timestamp out of a file and then compare with system time to see whether the file is older than 5 minutes or not and I am wondering how that can be achieved`. I am currently using

```
$timeStamp = strftime('%c', filectime($this->localPath));
$timeStamp2 = filectime($this->localPath);

```

The two `$timeStamp` and `$timeStamp2` are different, the 1st one is more human readable

```
$timeStamp Mon Jun 20 15:17:01 2011
$timeStamp2 1308608221 

```

What does `$timeStamp2` mean?

And again, how to see if `the file is more than 5 minutes old?`

Answer: 
`$timeStamp2` is a UNIX timestamp (the number of seconds passed since 01/01/1970).

You can get the same thing from `$timeStamp1` by doing

`$timeStamp1 = strtotime($timeStamp1)`

and then compare the two values
Answering your question "What does $timeStamp2 mean?"

`1308608221` is the number of seconds that have passed since midnight January 1,1970.