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I'm trying to figure out how exactly to use stat() to capture information about a file. What I need is to be able to print several fields of information about a file. So..
#include <iostream>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
using namespace std;
int main() {
struct stat buf;
stat("file",&buf);
...
cout << st_dev << endl;
cout << st_ino << endl;
cout << st_mode << endl;
cout << st_nlink << endl;
cout << st_uid << endl;
cout << st_gid << endl;
cout << st_rdev << endl;
cout << st_size << endl;
cout << st_blksize << endl;
cout << st_blocks << endl;
cout << st_atime << endl;
cout << st_mtime << endl;
cout << st_ctime << endl;
...
}
I'm thoroughly confused about how to do this. Why is &buf a parameter to stat? I don't care about storing this information in memory, I just need the outputted fields within my c++ program. How do I access the information contained in the struct? Is buf actually supposed to contain the returned information from stat()?