stat question

[David selby]

Hello,

A while ago someone suggested using the stat command to get modification
times for files etc, ls -al will give the info but I would have to do a
lot of string stripping etc ...

I have looked up man "stat", confusing ... googled for it, confusing !
It is not a regular command, ie "stat" on the command line is a no go
though there is a man page for it.

It appears to be a "pearl" module ?

OK simple question. In a bash script can I use stat to get modification
times of files ?
If so what is the syntax ?

Dave


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[Elie De Brauwer]

Frankly I don't see your problem

helios@kafka:~$ whereis stat
stat: /usr/bin/stat /usr/share/man/man1/stat.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/stat.2.gz
helios@kafka:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/stat
coreutils: /usr/bin/stat
helios@kafka:~$ stat workdir/
File: `workdir/'
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 8192 directory
Device: 304h/772d Inode: 671748 Links: 4
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ helios) Gid: ( 1000/ helios)
Access: 2003-08-02 08:55:49.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2003-07-21 16:14:04.000000000 +0200
Change: 2003-07-21 16:14:04.000000000 +0200

-> only the date
helios@kafka:~$ stat -c %y workdir/
2003-07-21 16:14:04.000000000 +0200

-> modification in seconds after the epoch
helios@kafka:~$ stat -c %Y workdir/
1058796844

Can you be more specific about _what_ you actually want ?

hth
Elie De Brauwer

On Saturday 02 August 2003 10:07, David selby wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A while ago someone suggested using the stat command to get modification
> times for files etc, ls -al will give the info but I would have to do a
> lot of string stripping etc ...
>
> I have looked up man "stat", confusing ... googled for it, confusing !
> It is not a regular command, ie "stat" on the command line is a no go
> though there is a man page for it.
>
> It appears to be a "pearl" module ?
>
> OK simple question. In a bash script can I use stat to get modification
> times of files ?
> If so what is the syntax ?
>
> Dave

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[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 09:07:26AM +0100, David selby wrote:

> A while ago someone suggested using the stat command to get modification
> times for files etc, ls -al will give the info but I would have to do a
> lot of string stripping etc ...
>
> I have looked up man "stat", confusing ... googled for it, confusing !
> It is not a regular command, ie "stat" on the command line is a no go
> though there is a man page for it.

In woody, you need the 'stat' package. In sarge and sid it's part of
coreutils, which everyone has installed. You can use
[url]http://packages.debian.org/[/url] to answer questions like this.

The reason your searches were confusing is that there's also a system
call called stat(), which C programmers care about but which isn't
useful on the command line.

> It appears to be a "pearl" module ?

It's called 'perl', not 'pearl' :-) And no, while there may be a Perl
module with a similar name it's probably not what your respondent was
referring to.

> OK simple question. In a bash script can I use stat to get modification
> times of files ?
> If so what is the syntax ?

'stat' is a bit tedious for this, because you'd have to parse it out of
the output using sed or something, but it can be done. The most common
use of modification times is to find out whether one file is newer or
older than another, and you do that with '[ file1 -nt file2 ]' and '[
file1 -ot file2 ]' respectively. If it's something else, give us a bit
more detail about what you're trying to do.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]


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[David selby]

Elie De Brauwer wrote:

>a) do you have the coreutils package installed (which provides the stat binary
>on my machine
>
>b) that is not true, there are manpages for a whole lot of file, for example
>if you have the mesa development files installed you have the manpages for
>all Opengl functions available.
>On my system i have two separate stat manpage i have
>man 1 stat
>(this describes the command like i pasted below)
>man 2 stat
>(which describes the stat system calls which you can use in c/c++ (and
>probably other) programs to get information about files on you system.)
>
>helios@kafka:~$ dpkg -S /usr/share/man/man2/stat.2.gz
>manpages-dev: /usr/share/man/man2/stat.2.gz
>elios@kafka:~$ dpkg -S /usr/share/man/man1/stat.1.gz
>coreutils: /usr/share/man/man1/stat.1.gz
>
>As you can see both manpages (which have the same name but cover different
>topics) are originating from different packages, so normally installing
>coreutils should provide you with the binary you need.
>
>hth
>
>

Thanks for the clarification on man pages ...

I don't appear to have the coreutils package installed.
Something tells me I am missing something obvious but !

debian:/home/web# apt-cache gencaches
Reading Package Lists... Done
debian:/home/web#
debian:/home/web# apt-cache search coreutils
debian:/home/web#

and from aptitude a search for coreutils provides zip, running debian woody

OK what am I missing !
Dave



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[David selby]

David selby wrote:

>
>
> Elie De Brauwer wrote:
>

>> a) do you have the coreutils package installed (which provides the
>> stat binary on my machine
>>
>> b) that is not true, there are manpages for a whole lot of file, for
>> example if you have the mesa development files installed you have the
>> manpages for all Opengl functions available. On my system i have two
>> separate stat manpage i have man 1 stat (this describes the command
>> like i pasted below)
>> man 2 stat
>> (which describes the stat system calls which you can use in c/c++
>> (and probably other) programs to get information about files on you
>> system.)
>>
>> helios@kafka:~$ dpkg -S /usr/share/man/man2/stat.2.gz
>> manpages-dev: /usr/share/man/man2/stat.2.gz
>> elios@kafka:~$ dpkg -S /usr/share/man/man1/stat.1.gz
>> coreutils: /usr/share/man/man1/stat.1.gz
>>
>> As you can see both manpages (which have the same name but cover
>> different topics) are originating from different packages, so
>> normally installing coreutils should provide you with the binary you
>> need.
>>
>> hth
>>
>>

>
> Thanks for the clarification on man pages ...
>
> I don't appear to have the coreutils package installed.
> Something tells me I am missing something obvious but !
>
> debian:/home/web# apt-cache gencaches
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> debian:/home/web#
> debian:/home/web# apt-cache search coreutils
> debian:/home/web#
>
> and from aptitude a search for coreutils provides zip, running debian
> woody
>
> OK what am I missing !
> Dave

All sorted, used file1 -ot file2 instead as suggested by colin, didn't
know bash could do that !
many thanks for your help anyhow.

Dave

PS still cant find coreutils or stat, though its not a problem now.

debian:/home/web# dpkg -i coreutils
dpkg: error processing coreutils (--install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
coreutils
debian:/home/web# dpkg -i stat
dpkg: error processing stat (--install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
stat
debian:/home/web#







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[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 11:55:43AM +0100, David selby wrote:

> PS still cant find coreutils

You won't be able to find coreutils on woody. It hadn't been created yet
then!

> or stat, though its not a problem now.
>
> debian:/home/web# dpkg -i coreutils
> dpkg: error processing coreutils (--install):
> cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> coreutils
> debian:/home/web# dpkg -i stat
> dpkg: error processing stat (--install):
> cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> stat
> debian:/home/web#

'dpkg -i' doesn't work that way; it takes a .deb filename. Use 'apt-get
install stat' or some other package manager if you just have the package
name.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]


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[Johannes Zarl]

> PS still cant find coreutils or stat, though its not a problem now.

>
> debian:/home/web# dpkg -i coreutils
> dpkg: error processing coreutils (--install):
> cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> coreutils
> debian:/home/web# dpkg -i stat
> dpkg: error processing stat (--install):
> cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> stat
> debian:/home/web#

Could it be that you want to do:
# apt-get install stat

As far as I know, dpkg is only used to install packages, which are already
downloaded (from ``dpkg --help'': ``dpkg -i|--install <.deb file name>'').

Does it show up on apt-cache[1]?

Cheers,
Johannes

[1]:
# apt-cache search ^stat
....
stat - wrapper for stat() and statfs calls
....
# apt-cache show stat
Package: stat
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 80
Maintainer: Michael Meskes <meskes@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 3.3-2
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4)
Filename: pool/main/s/stat/stat_3.3-2_i386.deb
Size: 11916
MD5sum: d576a105c03861f57e9c8b82a9b3dfd5
Description: wrapper for stat() and statfs calls
Display all information about a file that the stat() call provides and all
information about a filesystem that statfs() provides.

#

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Dictator


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[David selby]

>

> PS still cant find coreutils or stat, though its not a problem now.
>
> debian:/home/web# dpkg -i stat
> dpkg: error processing stat (--install):
> cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> stat
> debian:/home/web#

Err can I crawl into a hole, please ...

apt-get install stat works just fine !

Thanks
Dave

PS I think I need a break, Im getting over linuxed.



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