@node stat
@subsection @code{stat}
@findex stat

POSIX specification:@* @url{https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/functions/stat.html}

Gnulib module: stat
@mindex stat

Portability problems fixed by Gnulib:
@itemize
@item
On platforms where @code{off_t} is a 32-bit type, @code{stat} may not correctly
report the size of files or block devices 2 GiB and larger.
@xref{Large File Support}.
@item
On Linux/x86 and Linux/x86_64, applications compiled in 32-bit mode cannot
access files that happen to have a 64-bit inode number.  This can occur with
file systems such as XFS (typically on large disks) and NFS.
@xref{Large File Support}.
@item
The @code{st_atime}, @code{st_ctime}, @code{st_mtime} fields are affected by
the current time zone and by the DST flag of the current time zone on some
platforms:
mingw, MSVC 14 (when the environment variable @env{TZ} is set).
@item
On MSVC 14, this function fails with error @code{ENOENT}
on files such as @samp{C:\pagefile.sys} and
on directories such as @samp{C:\System Volume Information}.
@item
On some platforms, @code{stat("link-to-file/",buf)} succeeds instead
of failing with @code{ENOTDIR}.
macOS 14, FreeBSD 7.2, AIX 7.1, Solaris 9, mingw64.
@item
On some platforms, @code{stat(".",buf)} and @code{stat("./",buf)} give
different results:
mingw, MSVC 14.
@item
@c https://sourceforge.net/p/mingw-w64/bugs/1009/
On mingw, the @code{st_mode} field of @code{stat("NUL",buf)} is bogus,
suggesting that @code{NUL} is a regular file.
@item
On macOS 12.6, when this function yields a timestamp with a
nonpositive @code{tv_sec} value, @code{tv_nsec} might be in the range
@minus{}999999999..@minus{}1, representing a negative nanoseconds
offset from @code{tv_sec}.  Solaris 11.4 is similar, except that
@code{tv_sec} might also be @minus{}1000000000.
@item
On Windows platforms (excluding Cygwin), a different name has to be used
for the null device, namely @code{"NUL"} instead of @code{"/dev/null"}.
@end itemize

Portability problems not fixed by Gnulib:
@itemize
@item
@xref{sys/stat.h}, for general portability problems with @code{struct stat}.
@item
Cygwin's @code{stat} function sometimes sets @code{errno} to @code{EACCES} when
@code{ENOENT} would be more appropriate.
@item
This function sets @code{st_ino} only to the low-order 32 bits of
the inode number of a socket or pipe, which thus can disagree
with the @code{st_ino} obtained by @code{fstat}:
macOS 14.
@item
Because of the definition of @code{struct stat}, it is not possible to
portably replace @code{stat} via an object-like macro.  Therefore,
expressions such as @code{(islnk ? lstat : stat) (name, buf)} are not
portable, and should instead be written @code{islnk ? lstat (name,
buf) : stat (name, buf)}.
@end itemize
