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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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stat(2) System Calls Manual stat(2)
stat, fstat, lstat, fstatat - get file status
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <sys/stat.h>
int stat(const char *restrict path,
struct stat *restrict statbuf);
int fstat(int fd, struct stat *statbuf);
int lstat(const char *restrict path,
struct stat *restrict statbuf);
#include <fcntl.h> /* Definition of AT_* constants */
#include <sys/stat.h>
int fstatat(int dirfd, const char *restrict path,
struct stat *restrict statbuf, int flags);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
feature_test_macros(7)):
lstat():
/* Since glibc 2.20 */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
|| _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
|| /* Since glibc 2.10: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L
|| /* glibc 2.19 and earlier */ _BSD_SOURCE
fstatat():
Since glibc 2.10:
_POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
Before glibc 2.10:
_ATFILE_SOURCE
These functions return information about a file, in the buffer
pointed to by statbuf. No permissions are required on the file
itself, but—in the case of stat(), fstatat(), and lstat()—execute
(search) permission is required on all of the directories in path
that lead to the file.
stat() and fstatat() retrieve information about the file pointed
to by path; the differences for fstatat() are described below.
lstat() is identical to stat(), except that if path is a symbolic
link, then it returns information about the link itself, not the
file that the link refers to.
fstat() is identical to stat(), except that the file about which
information is to be retrieved is specified by the file descriptor
fd.
The stat structure
All of these system calls return a stat structure (see
stat(3type)).
Note: for performance and simplicity reasons, different fields in
the stat structure may contain state information from different
moments during the execution of the system call. For example, if
st_mode or st_uid is changed by another process by calling
chmod(2) or chown(2), stat() might return the old st_mode together
with the new st_uid, or the old st_uid together with the new
st_mode.
fstatat()
The fstatat() system call is a more general interface for
accessing file information which can still provide exactly the
behavior of each of stat(), lstat(), and fstat().
If path is relative, then it is interpreted relative to the
directory referred to by the file descriptor dirfd (rather than
relative to the current working directory of the calling process,
as is done by stat() and lstat() for a relative pathname).
If path is relative and dirfd is the special value AT_FDCWD, then
path is interpreted relative to the current working directory of
the calling process (like stat() and lstat()).
If path is absolute, then dirfd is ignored.
flags can either be 0, or include one or more of the following
flags ORed:
AT_EMPTY_PATH (since Linux 2.6.39)
If path is an empty string (or NULL, since Linux 6.11)
operate on the file referred to by dirfd (which may have
been obtained using the open(2) O_PATH flag). In this
case, dirfd can refer to any type of file, not just a
directory, and the behavior of fstatat() is similar to that
of fstat(). If dirfd is AT_FDCWD, the call operates on the
current working directory. This flag is Linux-specific;
define _GNU_SOURCE to obtain its definition.
AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT (since Linux 2.6.38)
Don't automount the terminal ("basename") component of
path. Since Linux 3.1 this flag is ignored. Since Linux
4.11 this flag is implied.
AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW
If path is a symbolic link, do not dereference it: instead
return information about the link itself, like lstat().
(By default, fstatat() dereferences symbolic links, like
stat().)
See openat(2) for an explanation of the need for fstatat().
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno
is set to indicate the error.
EACCES Search permission is denied for one of the directories in
the path prefix of path. (See also path_resolution(7).)
EBADF fd is not a valid open file descriptor.
EBADF (fstatat()) path is relative but dirfd is neither AT_FDCWD
nor a valid file descriptor.
EFAULT Bad address.
EINVAL (fstatat()) Invalid flag specified in flags.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links encountered while traversing the
path.
ENAMETOOLONG
path is too long.
ENOENT A component of path does not exist or is a dangling
symbolic link.
ENOENT path is an empty string and AT_EMPTY_PATH was not specified
in flags.
ENOMEM Out of memory (i.e., kernel memory).
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix of path is not a directory.
ENOTDIR
(fstatat()) path is relative and dirfd is a file descriptor
referring to a file other than a directory.
EOVERFLOW
path or fd refers to a file whose size, inode number, or
number of blocks cannot be represented in, respectively,
the types off_t, ino_t, or blkcnt_t. This error can occur
when, for example, an application compiled on a 32-bit
platform without -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 calls stat() on a
file whose size exceeds (1<<31)-1 bytes.
POSIX.1-2008.
stat()
fstat()
lstat()
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
fstatat()
POSIX.1-2008. Linux 2.6.16, glibc 2.4.
According to POSIX.1-2001, lstat() on a symbolic link need return
valid information only in the st_size field and the file type of
the st_mode field of the stat structure. POSIX.1-2008 tightens
the specification, requiring lstat() to return valid information
in all fields except the mode bits in st_mode.
Use of the st_blocks and st_blksize fields may be less portable.
(They were introduced in BSD. The interpretation differs between
systems, and possibly on a single system when NFS mounts are
involved.)
C library/kernel differences
Over time, increases in the size of the stat structure have led to
three successive versions of stat(): sys_stat() (slot
__NR_oldstat), sys_newstat() (slot __NR_stat), and sys_stat64()
(slot __NR_stat64) on 32-bit platforms such as i386. The first
two versions were already present in Linux 1.0 (albeit with
different names); the last was added in Linux 2.4. Similar
remarks apply for fstat() and lstat().
The kernel-internal versions of the stat structure dealt with by
the different versions are, respectively:
__old_kernel_stat
The original structure, with rather narrow fields, and no
padding.
stat Larger st_ino field and padding added to various parts of
the structure to allow for future expansion.
stat64 Even larger st_ino field, larger st_uid and st_gid fields
to accommodate the Linux-2.4 expansion of UIDs and GIDs to
32 bits, and various other enlarged fields and further
padding in the structure. (Various padding bytes were
eventually consumed in Linux 2.6, with the advent of 32-bit
device IDs and nanosecond components for the timestamp
fields.)
The glibc stat() wrapper function hides these details from
applications, invoking the most recent version of the system call
provided by the kernel, and repacking the returned information if
required for old binaries.
On modern 64-bit systems, life is simpler: there is a single
stat() system call and the kernel deals with a stat structure that
contains fields of a sufficient size.
The underlying system call employed by the glibc fstatat() wrapper
function is actually called fstatat64() or, on some architectures,
newfstatat().
The following program calls lstat() and displays selected fields
in the returned stat structure.
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/sysmacros.h>
#include <time.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
struct stat sb;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <path>\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (lstat(argv[1], &sb) == -1) {
perror("lstat");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("ID of containing device: [%x,%x]\n",
major(sb.st_dev),
minor(sb.st_dev));
printf("File type: ");
switch (sb.st_mode & S_IFMT) {
case S_IFBLK: printf("block device\n"); break;
case S_IFCHR: printf("character device\n"); break;
case S_IFDIR: printf("directory\n"); break;
case S_IFIFO: printf("FIFO/pipe\n"); break;
case S_IFLNK: printf("symlink\n"); break;
case S_IFREG: printf("regular file\n"); break;
case S_IFSOCK: printf("socket\n"); break;
default: printf("unknown?\n"); break;
}
printf("I-node number: %ju\n", (uintmax_t) sb.st_ino);
printf("Mode: %jo (octal)\n",
(uintmax_t) sb.st_mode);
printf("Link count: %ju\n", (uintmax_t) sb.st_nlink);
printf("Ownership: UID=%ju GID=%ju\n",
(uintmax_t) sb.st_uid, (uintmax_t) sb.st_gid);
printf("Preferred I/O block size: %jd bytes\n",
(intmax_t) sb.st_blksize);
printf("File size: %jd bytes\n",
(intmax_t) sb.st_size);
printf("Blocks allocated: %jd\n",
(intmax_t) sb.st_blocks);
printf("Last status change: %s", ctime(&sb.st_ctime));
printf("Last file access: %s", ctime(&sb.st_atime));
printf("Last file modification: %s", ctime(&sb.st_mtime));
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
ls(1), stat(1), access(2), chmod(2), chown(2), readlink(2),
statx(2), utime(2), stat(3type), capabilities(7), inode(7),
symlink(7)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
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⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
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man-pages@man7.org
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17 stat(2)
Pages that refer to this page: bash(1), find(1), fuser(1), lsfd(1), pv(1), rsync(1), stat(1), strace(1), systemd-analyze(1), access(2), chmod(2), fallocate(2), fanotify_init(2), futimesat(2), getxattr(2), ioctl_nsfs(2), link(2), listxattr(2), mkdir(2), mknod(2), mount(2), NS_GET_USERNS(2const), open(2), pivot_root(2), readlink(2), removexattr(2), setxattr(2), spu_create(2), statfs(2), statx(2), symlink(2), syscalls(2), truncate(2), umask(2), ustat(2), utime(2), utimensat(2), dirfd(3), euidaccess(3), fseek(3), ftok(3), fts(3), ftw(3), getfilecon(3), getseuserbyname(3), glob(3), isatty(3), isfdtype(3), makedev(3), mkfifo(3), readdir(3), readline(3), sd_is_fifo(3), sd_pidfd_get_inode_id(3), selabel_lookup_best_match(3), setfilecon(3), shm_open(3), stat(3type), ttyname(3), fuse(4), nfs(5), proc(5), proc_pid_mountinfo(5), selabel_file(5), sysfs(5), inode(7), inotify(7), landlock(7), namespaces(7), path_resolution(7), pipe(7), shm_overview(7), signal-safety(7), spufs(7), symlink(7), time(7), user_namespaces(7), xattr(7), lsof(8), umount(8), xfs_db(8), xfs_io(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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