stat a file

[pelos]

I am trying to get the time of the file or the size or any of the attributes of the file. after reading several examples and replicating the code I get a blank line =( been new to perl I am assuming that might be something I am doing, I am using active perl in windows 7

use File::stat;
$mtime = (stat("C:/PC_Files/Dropbox/Beta/test.txt"));
print $mtime[5];

doesn't matter what 0-13 stat I ask. but if I print the variable I get no [] I get

File::stat=ARRAY(0x3585c0)

thanks for the tips.

[moritz]

You can either store the result of stat in an array:

my @stat = stat $filename;
say $stat[5];

or you can use the File::stat module, in which case you get an object back:

use File::stat;
my $stat_obj = stat $filename;
print $stat_obj->mtime;

But you have to decide for one way or another -- mixing them is what led to your confusion in the first place.

[pelos]

thanks I will give it a try. do you recommend to stick to one particular method? or doesn't really matter?

[afoken]

stat has slightly less overhead, but File::stat is slightly more readable. File::stat is part of the Perl core since 5.004 (released 1997-05-15), so it's quite safe to assume that File::stat is available even on older Perl installations.

File::stat has some minor problems, mainly with the implicit $_ and the special handle _, see "Bugs" in File::stat. Also, the filetest operators -t, -T, and -B are not implemented in File::stat. This is documented in "Errors".

Alexander