stat() - Returns File Statistics

<< File System Functions and Operations

<< Perl Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

This section provides a tutorial example on using stat() to return many statistics of the specified file, including file size, creation time, and last modification time.

Instead of using individual file test operators, you can use the stat() function to return a number of statistics of a file. The following tutorial program shows you how to use stat():

#- stat.pl
#- Copyright (c) 1995 by Dr. Herong Yang, http://www.herongyang.com/
#
   ($file) = @ARGV;
   die "Missing file name.\n" unless $file;
   ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
      $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks) = stat($file);
   print "dev = $dev\n";
   print "ino = $ino\n";
   print "mode = $mode\n";
   print "nlink = $nlink\n";
   print "uid = $uid\n";
   print "uid = $uid\n";
   print "gid = $gid\n";
   print "rdev = $rdev\n";
   print "size = $size\n";
   print "atime = $atime\n";
   print "mtime = $mtime\n";
   print "ctime = $ctime\n";
   print "blksize = $blksize\n";
   print "blocks = $blocks\n";
   exit;

If you run it on a Windows system, you will get something similar to this:

>stat.pl stat.pl
dev = 3
ino = 0
mode = 33206
nlink = 1
uid = 0
uid = 0
gid = 0
rdev = 3
size = 622
atime = 1069622049
mtime = 1069621972
ctime = 1069621496
blksize =
blocks =

Sections in This Chapter

Built-in Functions to Work with the File System

File Test Operators

stat() - Returns File Statistics