CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cstatfstat
uzr
uzr

Reputation: 1220

Difference between lstat fstat and stat in C

Im writing a school assignment in C to search through a file system for directories, regular files and symlinks. For now i use lstat to get information about items.

So whats the difference between lstat fstat and stat system calls?

Upvotes: 42

Views: 33115

Answers (3)

user619271
user619271

Reputation: 5022

I was also searching for stat vs lstat vs fstat and although there is already an answer to this question, I'd like to see it formatted like that:

lstat() is identical to stat(), except that if pathname is a symbolic link, then it returns information about the link itself, not the file that it refers to.

fstat() is identical to stat(), except that the file about which information is to be retrieved is specified by a file descriptor (instead of a file name).

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/stat.2.html

Upvotes: 90

bharat nc
bharat nc

Reputation: 127

Similarity: They both take filename as arguments.

Difference: Whenever the file name is a symbolic link, stat() returns the attributes or inode information about the target file associated with the link. Whereas, lstat() return the attributes of only the link.

Refer the manpage for stat() vs lstat().

Upvotes: 3

Bryan S.
Bryan S.

Reputation: 52

googling the following: lstat v fstat v stat

the first link provided is a man page that describes these differences: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man2/stat.2.html

listed on the page is the following simple answer: stat() stats the file pointed to by path and fills in buf. lstat() is identical to stat(), except that if path is a symbolic link, then the link itself is stat-ed, not the file that it refers to. fstat() is identical to stat(), except that the file to be stat-ed is specified by the file descriptor fd.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions