stat function - file status


 ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
       $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
       = stat($filename);

  0 dev      device number of filesystem
  1 ino      inode number
  2 mode     file mode  (type and permissions)
  3 nlink    number of (hard) links to the file
  4 uid      numeric user ID of file's owner
  5 gid      numeric group ID of file's owner
  6 rdev     the device identifier (special files only)
  7 size     total size of file, in bytes
  8 atime    last access time in seconds since the epoch
  9 mtime    last modify time in seconds since the epoch
 10 ctime    inode change time (NOT creation time!) in seconds since the epoch
 11 blksize  preferred block size for file system I/O
 12 blocks   actual number of blocks allocated

Note that on many OS's, ctime is approximately useless. This is because the mtime and atime are in the inode, which means that ctime gets updated every time the mtime does. This is why, for example, on Linux the ctime always seems to equal the mtime. This is the correct behavior as things are defined, however it is not very useful.


source: perlfunc manpage
keywords: perl, stat, function
date: 04/02/2005