Using system tools – stat

While working on Linux, the most commonly used command is ls, which gives a listing of the files in the specified directory. 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 inode, it is able to give more information about the files.

Getting ready

Since stat is an built-in command of Linux, nothing else needs to be installed so that we can use it.

How to do it...

This section will explain about the options and usage of the stat" command. By using stat, we can get a detailed status of a particular file or file system.

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

However, when we use the stat command to check details about...