The UNIX or Linux command that allows a user to view the contents of an inode. Properties such as name,date,size, and inode number are reported.

A figure, or otherwise derrived mathematical represenatation of a fact.

See: statistic

from http://www.medicinenet.com

A common medical abbreviation which is used to imply urgent or rush. It is derived from a latin word "statim" which means immediately.

The stat (and fstat) unix system calls update a structure (passed by reference) with information about an inode. Standard fields include:
st_mode
this includes inode type (directory, plain file, device file, pipe, socket, symbolic link, etc.) and permission bitmask
st_ino
inode number of the file
st_dev
device number of the device containing the mounted filesystem
st_nlink
number of names (hard links) this file has
st_uid
owner of the file
st_gid
group owner of the file
st_size
offset of the last byte in the file (length)
st_atime
last time the file was accessed
st_mtime
last time the file was modified
st_ctime
last time the file was changed (including modifying atime or mtime)
st_blocks (BSD derived systems only--not POSIX)
size of the file in 512b blocks
The inode number and device number together are guarenteed to uniquely identify a file. This is the only (portable) way to verify that two names are hardlinks to the same file.

If (st_blocks * 512 < st_size), then the file is a sparse file and has one or more holes in it. (I.e., not every section of the file has disk space allocated to it.) This is the only (portable) way to detect holes in a file.

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