Using system tools – stat

While working on Linux, the most commonly used command is ls, which gives a listing of the files in the directory we specified. However, it shows only a little information about the files.

Instead, if we use the stat command, we can get more information about the files/directories when compared to using ls. Because stat is able to get information about a file from its node, it is able to give more information about the files.

Getting ready

Since stat is a built-in command of Linux, nothing else is needed to be installed in order to use it.

How to do it…

This section will explain the options and usage of the stat command. Using stat, we will can get the detailed status of a particular file or filesystem.

1. Suppose we have a file called example.txt. When we perform a long-listing of this file using the ls -l command, we get information about the file, which includes when the file was last modified.

   However, when we use the stat command to check the details of the same file...