lstat

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

lstat — Gives information about a file or symbolic link

Description

lstat(string $filename): array|false

Gathers the statistics of the file or symbolic link named by filename.

Parameters

filename: Path to a file or a symbolic link.

Return Values

See the manual page for stat() for information on the structure of the array that lstat() returns. This function is identical to the stat() function except that if the filename parameter is a symbolic link, the status of the symbolic link is returned, not the status of the file pointed to by the symbolic link.

On failure, false is returned.

Errors/Exceptions

Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.

Examples

Example #1 Comparison of stat() and lstat()

<?php
symlink('uploads.php', 'uploads');

// Contrast information for uploads.php and uploads
array_diff(stat('uploads'), lstat('uploads'));
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Information that differs between the two files.

Array
(
    [ino] => 97236376
    [mode] => 33188
    [size] => 34
    [atime] => 1223580003
    [mtime] => 1223581848
    [ctime] => 1223581848
    [blocks] => 8
)

Notes

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

Tip

As of PHP 5.0.0, this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Supported Protocols and Wrappers to determine which wrappers support stat() family of functionality.

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User Contributed Notes 2 notes

down

-1

HP@SG ¶

4 years ago

Just for information and in reply to a previous message left 4 years ago by "salsi at icosaedro dot it" :

Files larger than 2 GiB can be handled on 64-bit Linux systems.

My test in a terminal is as follow (using <?php ;?> tags to colour the results for ease of reading) :

$ php -v

<?php
"
PHP 7.2.24-0ubuntu0.18.04.7 (cli) (built: Oct  7 2020 15:24:25) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.2.24-0ubuntu0.18.04.7, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies
"
;?>

$ date ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/php_test_huge bs=1024K count=2100 ; date ; ls -l /tmp/php_test_huge

<?php
"
Wed Nov 11 15:35:46 +08 2020
2100+0 records in
2100+0 records out
2202009600 bytes (2.2 GB, 2.1 GiB) copied, 4.79192 s, 460 MB/s
Wed Nov 11 15:35:51 +08 2020
-rw-r--r-- 1 harold harold 2202009600 Nov 11 15:35 /tmp/php_test_huge
"
;?>

$ php -r 'var_dump(lstat("/tmp/php_test_huge"));'

<?php
"
array(26) {
  [0]=>
  int(2050)
  [1]=>
  int(19923027)
  [2]=>
  int(33188)
  [3]=>
  int(1)
  [4]=>
  int(1000)
  [5]=>
  int(1000)
  [6]=>
  int(0)
  [7]=>
  int(2202009600)
  [8]=>
  int(1605079647)
  [9]=>
  int(1605080149)
  [10]=>
  int(1605080149)
  [11]=>
  int(4096)
  [12]=>
  int(4300808)
  ["dev"]=>
  int(2050)
  ["ino"]=>
  int(19923027)
  ["mode"]=>
  int(33188)
  ["nlink"]=>
  int(1)
  ["uid"]=>
  int(1000)
  ["gid"]=>
  int(1000)
  ["rdev"]=>
  int(0)
  ["size"]=>
  int(2202009600)
  ["atime"]=>
  int(1605079647)
  ["mtime"]=>
  int(1605080149)
  ["ctime"]=>
  int(1605080149)
  ["blksize"]=>
  int(4096)
  ["blocks"]=>
  int(4300808)
}
"
;?>