Intro To 'stat' Command In Linux

2023-06-15 - By Robert Elder

I use the 'stat' command to show file system attributes of files on my system:

stat README.txt

  File: README.txt
  Size: 13        	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 10303h/66307d	Inode: 1837700     Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/  robert)   Gid: ( 1000/  robert)
Access: 2023-04-10 22:14:51.642526898 -0400
Modify: 2023-04-10 22:14:51.642526898 -0400
Change: 2023-04-10 22:14:51.642526898 -0400
 Birth: -

The 'stat' Command Vs. The 'ls' Command

Many of the pieces of information that are shown by the 'stat' command are also shown by the ls command:

ls -li README.txt

1837700 -rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert      13 Apr 10 22:14 README.txt

When compared to the 'ls' command, the output from the 'stat' command focuses mainly on file system details like inodes, block sizes, and verbose descriptions of the file's permissions and timestamp attributes.

File System Information

You can use the '-f' flag to show information about a file's host file system:

stat -f README.txt

  File: "README.txt"
    ID: ae86a3cf56bc3662 Namelen: 255     Type: ext2/ext3
Block size: 4096       Fundamental block size: 4096
Blocks: Total: 23883881   Free: 5196751    Available: 3971958
Inodes: Total: 6111232    Free: 5582899

Custom Format Strings

The 'stat' command allows you to specify a format string to selectively output only the information that you need. Here are several different types of files that we can use for this example:

ls -ld README.txt /dev/null /usr /run/initctl

crw-rw-rw-  1 root   root   1, 3 Jun 10 10:35 /dev/null
-rw-rw-r--  1 robert robert   13 Jun 10 13:44 README.txt
prw-------  1 root   root      0 Jun 10 10:35 /run/initctl
drwxr-xr-x 14 root   root   4096 Feb  9  2021 /usr

This command prints the file type of each argument:

stat -c "'%n' is a %F." README.txt /dev/null /usr /run/initctl

'README.txt' is a regular file.
'/dev/null' is a character special file.
'/usr' is a directory.
'/run/initctl' is a fifo.

This command prints the file size and the number of blocks that each file uses:

stat -c "'%n' has size %s and uses %b blocks." README.txt /dev/null /usr /run/initctl

'README.txt' has size 13 and uses 8 blocks.
'/dev/null' has size 0 and uses 0 blocks.
'/usr' has size 4096 and uses 8 blocks.
'/run/initctl' has size 0 and uses 0 blocks.

This command reports the access rights in both human readable and octal format:

stat -c "'%n' has access rights: %A (%a in octal)." README.txt /dev/null /usr /run/initctl

'README.txt' has access rights: -rw-rw-r-- (664 in octal).
'/dev/null' has access rights: crw-rw-rw- (666 in octal).
'/usr' has access rights: drwxr-xr-x (755 in octal).
'/run/initctl' has access rights: prw------- (600 in octal).

And that's why the 'stat' command is my favourite Linux command.

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