Python in a Nutshell

Name

stat

Synopsis

stat(path)

Returns a value x that is a tuple of 10 integers that provide information about a file or subdirectory path. See Section 10.2.5 later in this chapter for details about using the returned tuple. In Python 2.2 and later, x is of type stat_result. You can still use x as a tuple, but you can also access x’s items as read-only attributes x .st_mode, x .st_ino, and so on, using as attribute names the lowercase versions of the names of constants listed later in Table 10-1.

A module named statcache also supplies a function named stat, like os.stat but with an enhancement: the returned tuple (or stat_result instance) is cached, so repeated requests about the same file run faster. statcache cannot detect changes automatically, so you should use it only for stable files that do not change in the time between stat requests.