To examine the attributes of files, use the functions stat
,
fstat
and lstat
. They return the attribute information in
a struct stat
object. All three functions are declared in the
header file `sys/stat.h'.
stat
function returns information about the attributes of the
file named by filename in the structure pointed at by buf.
If filename is the name of a symbolic link, the attributes you get
describe the file that the link points to. If the link points to a
nonexistent file name, then stat
fails, reporting a nonexistent
file.
The return value is 0
if the operation is successful, and -1
on failure. In addition to the usual file name errors
(see section File Name Errors, the following errno
error conditions
are defined for this function:
ENOENT
fstat
function is like stat
, except that it takes an
open file descriptor as an argument instead of a file name.
See section Low-Level Input/Output.
Like stat
, fstat
returns 0
on success and -1
on failure. The following errno
error conditions are defined for
fstat
:
EBADF
lstat
function is like stat
, except that it does not
follow symbolic links. If filename is the name of a symbolic
link, lstat
returns information about the link itself; otherwise,
lstat
works like stat
. See section Symbolic Links.
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