File Info

Obtaining information about files in a script using the stat command, which is available independently of the bash shell.

Verbose File Info

Without any options, you get everything you could possibly want to know and then some:

$ stat index.html
  File: 'index.html'
  Size: 2417            Blocks: 24         IO Block: 4096   regular
file
Device: 18h/24d Inode: 9439118     Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 1000/jcdusse)   Gid: (
1000/jcdusse)
Access: 2016-07-14 07:59:19.071077490 +0200
Modify: 2010-08-14 06:53:59.000000000 +0200
Change: 2012-09-23 11:39:20.509256034 +0200
 Birth: -

To get the info in a form usable in scripts, specify the exact bit of info required using --format.

File Size

size=$(stat --format=%s $0)
echo 'This script is '"${size}"' bytes'

File Permissions

$ stat --format='%A %a' .
drwxr-xr-x 755

File Owner

$ stat --format=%U .
jcdusse

File Type

$ stat --format=%F .
Directory

Format

Handily, the --format (or if you must, -c) allows separators directly in the argument string:

$ stat --format=xx'%Ayy%a'zz .
xxdrwxr-xr-xyy755zz

Path

Given a relative path, sometimes you need the absolute ("real") path:

$ realpath ~
/home/efudd