stat/fstat/lstat functions.

All three functions return information about a file. Please note that devices are seen as files to Unix, so you could 'stat' things like /dev/mouse to see when the mouse was last moved.

stat return the status of a file.

fstat stats an open file.

lstat reports on a link, not the file it points too.

Libraries: sys/stat.h
	 unistd.h
Syntax: struct stat stat_p;
 stat ("martin", &stat_p);
Stat Structure:
 struct stat
 {
 dev_t st_dev; /* device */
 ino_t st_ino; /* inode */
 umode_t st_mode; /* protection */
 nlink_t st_nlink; /* number of hard links */
 uid_t st_uid; /* user ID of owner */
 gid_t st_gid; /* group ID of owner */
 dev_t st_rdev; /* device type (if inode device) */
 off_t st_size; /* total size, in bytes */
 unsigned long st_blksize; /* blocksize for filesystem I/O */
 unsigned long st_blocks; /* number of blocks allocated */
 time_t st_atime; /* time of last access */
 time_t st_mtime; /* time of last modification */
 time_t st_ctime; /* time of last change */
 };

	S_ISLNK(st_mode) is it a symbolic link
 S_ISREG(st_mode) regular file
 S_ISDIR(st_mode) directory
 S_ISCHR(st_mode) character device
 S_ISBLK(st_mode) block device
 S_ISFIFO(st_mode) fifo
 S_ISSOCK(st_mode) socket	

man page to provide all the details.

Examples

See also:

Note