stat command in UNIX

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stat [OPTION]... FILE...

Introduction

stat command displays file or file system status.

Options

Here are some of the options that you will use the most:

  • -L, --dereference: follow links
  • -f, --file-system: display file system status instead of file status
  • -c --format=FORMAT: use the specified FORMAT instead of the default.
    output a newline after each use of FORMAT
  • --printf=FORMAT: interpret backslash escapes, and do not output a mandatory trailing newline.
    if you want a newline, include \n in FORMAT
  • -t, --terse: print the information in terse form

The valid format sequences for files (without --file-system) are so many that I suggest you to look for the official documentation to see them all.

Examples

Without any parameters, stat command displays the default output: file size and type, device type, inode number, UID, GID, number of links and access/modification dates of the file.

stat my-file.txt
  File: my-file.txt
  Size: 26              Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 10302h/66306d   Inode: 15208760    Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/     pit)   Gid: ( 1000/     pit)
Access: 2022-06-02 12:21:00.264595989 +0200
Modify: 2021-11-28 12:54:55.057498677 +0100
Change: 2022-01-30 00:10:19.688493688 +0100
 Birth: -

Check the filesystem status by using the -f option as shown below:

stat --file-system Documents/
  File: "Documents/"
    ID: 37eab0e240a4b3a1 Namelen: 255     Type: ext2/ext3
Block size: 4096       Fundamental block size: 4096
Blocks: Total: 122672878  Free: 70186800   Available: 63937930
Inodes: Total: 31227904   Free: 28939751

To only display inode and UID of a file, you need to use %i and %u format sequences inside FORMAT string for --printf option.

Please Note: \t print a tab (8 spaces) and \n print a new line.

stat --printf='%i\t%u\n' wifi-pwd.txt
15208760        1000

Quotes

Manual reference: