The stat command is useful to get details like file type, size, inode, permissions, last accessed and modified timestamps, etc. You'll get all of these details by default. The -c and --printf options can be used to display only the required details in a particular format.

Here's an example to get accessed and modified timestamps of a file:

# sample directory and sample file
$ mkdir stat_examples && cd $_
$ printf 'long\nshot\n' > ip.txt

# %x gives the last accessed timestamp
$ stat -c '%x' ip.txt
2023-03-27 20:20:55.217530670 +0530

# modify the file
$ printf 'apple\nbanana\n' >> ip.txt
# %y gives the last modified timestamp
$ stat -c '%y' ip.txt
2023-03-27 20:21:50.298964283 +0530

Here's an example with some more file properties:

# %s gives file size in bytes
# \n is used to insert a newline
# %i gives the inode value
# same as: stat --printf='%s\n%i\n' ip.txt
$ stat -c $'%s\n%i' ip.txt
23
6438890

Here's an example for a linked file:

$ ln -s /usr/share/dict/words words.txt

# %N gives quoted filenames
# if input is a link, path it points to is also displayed
$ stat -c '%N' words.txt
'words.txt' -> '/usr/share/dict/words'

You can also pass multiple file arguments:

$ printf '#!/bin/bash\n\necho hi\n' > hi.sh

# %s gives file size in bytes
# %n gives filenames
$ stat -c '%s %n' ip.txt hi.sh
23 ip.txt
21 hi.sh

info warning The stat command should be preferred instead of parsing ls -l output for file details. See mywiki.wooledge: avoid parsing output of ls and unix.stackexchange: why not parse ls? for explanation and other alternatives.

Video demo:


info See also my Computing from the Command Line ebook.