
Stat is a program that brings all the power of the stat(2) system call
to the shell programer.  It can be used to print various
characteristics of a file such as its size, permissions, dates, type
etc. in a variety of user specified formats.  The output can be easily
manipulated with tools such as awk, sed and sort to provide complex
file selection and printing mechanisms.  Obvious applications are
novice-user-friendly versions of ls(1) and getting the mode of a file
in a way that can be later used by chmod(1).  It has been tested under 
4.3 BSD, AIX, HP/UX, SunOS, and Ultrix.

The output format is specified at three different levels in a
printf(3S) like way.  A global output format string specifies the
items which are printed.  The way the different time values are printed
is specified by other format strings.  Finaly the way each individual
field is printed (number base, justification, padding) can be specified
using the normal printf specifications.

Comments and additions can be sent to the author:

	Diomidis Spinellis
	Myrsinis 1
	GR-145 62 Kifissia
	GREECE

--
Diomidis Spinellis                  Internet:                 dds@cc.ic.ac.uk
Department of Computing             UUCP:                    ...!ukc!iccc!dds
Imperial College                    JANET:                    dds@uk.ac.ic.cc
London SW7 2BZ                      #include "/dev/tty"
