| STAT(1) | General Commands Manual | STAT(1) | 
stat, readlink —
| stat | [ -FLnq] [-fformat |-l|-r|-s|-x] [-ttimefmt] [file ...] | 
| readlink | [ -fnqsv] [file ...] | 
stat utility displays information about the file
  pointed to by file. Read, write, or execute permissions
  of the named file are not required, but all directories listed in the pathname
  leading to the file must be searchable. If no argument is given,
  stat displays information about the file descriptor
  for standard input.
When invoked as readlink, only the target
    of the symbolic link is printed. If the given argument is not a symbolic
    link and the -f option is not specified,
    readlink will print nothing and exit with an error.
    If the -f option is specified, the output is
    canonicalized by following every symlink in every component of the given
    path recursively. readlink will resolve both
    absolute and relative paths, and return the absolute pathname corresponding
    to file. In this case, the argument does not need to
    be a symbolic link.
The information displayed is obtained by calling lstat(2) with the given argument and evaluating the returned structure. The default format displays the st_dev, st_ino, st_mode, st_nlink, st_uid, st_gid, st_rdev, st_size, st_atime, st_mtime, st_ctime, st_birthtime, st_blksize, st_blocks, and st_flags fields, in that order.
The options are as follows:
-F-F implies
      -l.-f
    format-Lstat will refer to the target of
      file, if file is a symbolic link, and not to
      file itself.-lls -lT
      format.-n-qreadlink, error messages are automatically
      suppressed.-r-sreadlink,
      suppress error messages. This is equivalent to specifying
    
FMT="st_dev=%d st_ino=%i st_mode=%#p st_nlink=%l st_uid=%u st_gid=%g"
FMT="$FMT st_rdev=%r st_size=%z st_atime=%Sa st_mtime=%Sm st_ctime=%Sc"
FMT="$FMT st_birthtime=%SB st_blksize=%k st_blocks=%b st_flags=%f"
stat -t %s -f "$FMT" .
    
    -s output remains valid.-t
    timefmt-v-x%, are then followed by a sequence of
  formatting characters, and end in a character that selects the field of the
  struct stat which is to be formatted. If the % is
  immediately followed by one of n,
  t, %, or
  @, then a newline character, a tab character, a
  percent character, or the current file number is printed, otherwise the string
  is examined for the following:
Any of the following optional flags:
#+-0+’ overrides a space if both are
      used.Then the following fields:
sizeprec.’ and a decimal digit string that
      indicates the maximum string length, the number of digits to appear after
      the decimal point in floating point output, or the minimum number of
      digits to appear in numeric output.fmtD, O,
      U, X,
      F, or S. These represent
      signed decimal output, octal output, unsigned decimal output, hexadecimal
      output, floating point output, and string output, respectively. Some
      output formats do not apply to all fields. Floating point output only
      applies to timespec fields (the a,
      m, and c fields).
    The special output specifier S may be
        used to indicate that the output, if applicable, should be in string
        format. May be used in combination with
amcdrgupls -lTd.NTYY is a string, but if specified
          explicitly, these four characters are prepended.subp, d,
      r, T,
      N, and z output formats.
      It can be one of the following:
    Hdatum:
        
      Mdatum:
        
      Ldatum:
        r,
            dpTls -F style output character for file
              type (the use of L here is optional)Nzdatumdiplu,
        gra,
        m, c,
        BzbkfvThe following five field specifiers are not drawn directly from the data in struct stat, but are:
NRTls -F or in a more
          descriptive form if the sub field specifier H
          is given.YZOnly the % and the field specifier are
    required. Most field specifiers default to U as an
    output form, with the exception of p which defaults
    to O; a,
    m, and c which default to
    D; and Y,
    T, and N, which default to
    S.
stat utility exits 0 on success,
  and >0 if an error occurs.
> stat /tmp/bar 0 78852 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 0 "Jul 8 10:26:03 2004" "Jul 8 10:26:03 2004" "Jul 8 10:28:13 2004" "Jan 1 09:00:00 1970" 16384 0 0 /tmp/bar
This example produces output very similar to that from
    find ... -ls (except that
    find(1) displays the time in a
    different format, and find(1)
    sometimes adds one or more spaces after the comma in
    “major,minor” for
    device nodes):
> stat -f "%7i %6b %-11Sp %3l %-17Su %-17Sg %9Z %Sm %N%SY" /tmp/bar 78852 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Jul 8 10:26:03 2004 /tmp/bar > find /tmp/bar -ls -exit 78852 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Jul 8 2004 /tmp/bar
This example produces output very similar to that from
    ls -lTd (except that
    ls(1) adjusts the column spacing
    differently when listing multiple files, and
    ls(1) adds at least one space
    after the comma in
    “major,minor” for
    device nodes):
> stat -f "%-11Sp %l %Su %Sg %Z %Sm %N%SY" /tmp/bar -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Jul 8 10:26:03 2004 /tmp/bar > ls -lTd /tmp/bar -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Jul 8 10:26:03 2004 /tmp/bar
Given a symbolic link “foo” that points from
    /tmp/foo to /, you would use
    stat as follows:
> stat -F /tmp/foo lrwxrwxrwx 1 jschauma cs 1 Apr 24 16:37:28 2002 /tmp/foo@ -> / > stat -LF /tmp/foo drwxr-xr-x 16 root wheel 512 Apr 19 10:57:54 2002 /tmp/foo/
To initialize some shell-variables, you could use the
    -s flag as follows:
> csh % eval set `stat -s .cshrc` % echo $st_size $st_mtime 1148 1015432481 > sh $ eval $(stat -s .profile) $ echo $st_size $st_mtime 1148 1015432481
In order to get a list of the kind of files including files pointed to if the file is a symbolic link, you could use the following format:
$ stat -f "%N: %HT%SY" /tmp/* /tmp/bar: Symbolic Link -> /tmp/foo /tmp/output25568: Regular File /tmp/blah: Directory /tmp/foo: Symbolic Link -> /
In order to get a list of the devices, their types and the major and minor device numbers, formatted with tabs and linebreaks, you could use the following format:
stat -f "Name: %N%n%tType: %HT%n%tMajor: %Hr%n%tMinor: %Lr%n%n" /dev/*
[...]
Name: /dev/wt8
        Type: Block Device
        Major: 3
        Minor: 8
Name: /dev/zero
        Type: Character Device
        Major: 2
        Minor: 12
In order to determine the permissions set on a file separately, you could use the following format:
> stat -f "%Sp -> owner=%SHp group=%SMp other=%SLp" . drwxr-xr-x -> owner=rwx group=r-x other=r-x
In order to determine the three files that have been modified most recently, you could use the following format:
> stat -f "%m%t%Sm %N" /tmp/* | sort -rn | head -3 | cut -f2- Apr 25 11:47:00 2002 /tmp/blah Apr 25 10:36:34 2002 /tmp/bar Apr 24 16:47:35 2002 /tmp/foo
User names, group names, and file names that contain spaces or
    other special characters may be encoded in
    vis(3) style, using the
    # modifier:
> ln -s 'target with spaces' 'link with spaces' > stat -f "%#N%#SY" 'link with spaces' link\swith\sspaces -> target\swith\sspaces
stat utility appeared in NetBSD
  1.6.
stat utility was written by Andrew
  Brown ⟨atatat@NetBSD.org⟩. This man page was written by
  Jan Schaumann ⟨jschauma@NetBSD.org⟩.
| September 19, 2017 | NetBSD 9.4 |