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stat Command Cheat Sheet

stat displays file or file system status. It provides much more detail than ls -l.

Synopsis

stat [OPTION]... FILE...

Basic Usage

File Info

stat file.txt
Output includes: - File: file.txt - Size: 1024 - Blocks: 8 - IO Block: 4096 - Type: regular file - Device: 802h/2050d - Inode: 123456 - Links: 1 - Access/Modify/Change timestamps

Custom Formatting (-c / --format)

Show only Octal Permissions

Useful for scripts checking permissions.

stat -c "%a" file.txt
# Output: 644

Show User and Group Name

stat -c "%U %G" file.txt
# Output: root root

Show File Size in Bytes

stat -c "%s" file.txt
# Output: 1024

Show Combined Info

stat -c "File: %n, Size: %s bytes, Perms: %a" file.txt

File System Status (-f)

Display info about the file system where the file resides, not the file itself.

stat -f /
Output: - Type: ext2/ext3 - Block size - Total/Free blocks (Disk usage) - Inodes

By default, stat shows info about the link itself. Use -L to see info about the target file.

stat -L /usr/bin/python

Common Format Sequences

Sequence Description
%a Access rights in octal (e.g., 644)
%A Access rights in human readable (e.g., -rw-r--r--)
%n File name
%s Total size, in bytes
%U User name of owner
%G Group name of owner
%x Time of last access
%y Time of last modification
%z Time of last change
%i Inode number

Notes

  • Timestamps:
    • Access (atime): Last read using cat, grep, etc.
    • Modify (mtime): Content was modified.
    • Change (ctime): Meta-data change (permissions, owner).