File::stat - by-name interface to Perl's built-in stat() functions
use File::stat; $st = stat($file) or die "No $file: $!"; if ( ($st->mode & 0111) && $st->nlink > 1) ) { print "$file is executable with lotsa links\n"; }
use File::stat qw(:FIELDS); stat($file) or die "No $file: $!"; if ( ($st_mode & 0111) && $st_nlink > 1) ) { print "$file is executable with lotsa links\n"; }
This module's default exports override the core stat() and lstat() functions, replacing them with versions that return "File::stat" objects. This object has methods that return the similarly named structure field name from the stat(2) function; namely, dev, ino, mode, nlink, uid, gid, rdev, size, atime, mtime, ctime, blksize, and blocks.
You may also import all the structure fields directly into your namespace
as regular variables using the :FIELDS import tag. (Note that this still
overrides your stat() and lstat() functions.) Access these fields as
variables named with a preceding st_
in front their method names.
Thus, $stat_obj->dev()
corresponds to $st_dev if you import
the fields.
To access this functionality without the core overrides,
pass the use
an empty import list, and then access
function functions with their full qualified names.
On the other hand, the built-ins are still available
via the CORE::
pseudo-package.
As of Perl 5.8.0 after using this module you cannot use the implicit
$_
or the special filehandle _
with stat() or lstat(), trying
to do so leads into strange errors. The workaround is for $_
to
be explicit
my $stat_obj = stat $_;
and for _
to explicitly populate the object using the unexported
and undocumented populate() function with CORE::stat():
my $stat_obj = File::stat::populate(CORE::stat(_));
While this class is currently implemented using the Class::Struct module to build a struct-like class, you shouldn't rely upon this.
Tom Christiansen