On Unix-like operating systems, the stat command displays the detailed status of a particular file or a file system.

This page describes the GNU/Linux version of stat.

Syntax

stat [OPTION]… FILE…

Options

The valid format sequences for files (without –filesystem):

  • Syntax
  • Examples
  • Related commands
  • Linux commands help

Valid format sequences for file systems:

Examples

stat index.htm

Reports the status of file index.htm, displaying results similar to the following output:

File: `index.htm’ Size: 17137 Blocks: 40 IO Block: 8192 regular file Device: 8h/8d Inode: 23161443 Links: 1 Access: (0644/-rw-r–r–) Uid: (17433/comphope) Gid: ( 32/ www) Access: 2007-04-03 09:20:18.000000000 -0600 Modify: 2007-04-01 23:13:05.000000000 -0600 Change: 2007-04-02 16:36:21.000000000 -0600

stat -f /dev/sda

With the -f option, stat can return the status of an entire file system. Here, it returns the status of the first hard disk. Output resembles the following:

File: “/dev/sda” ID: 0 Namelen: 255 Type: tmpfs Block size: 4096 Fundamental block size: 4096 Blocks: Total: 2560 Free: 2560 Available: 2560 Inodes: Total: 126428 Free: 125966

stat –format “%A” /var/log/syslog

Display only the access restrictions, in human-readable form, of the system log /var/log/syslog. Output resembles the following:

-rw-r—–

…which indicates that the file is readable and writable by root, readable by the owning group (in this case the admin group), and not accessible at all by others.

ls — List the contents of a directory or directories.