Concept: File stats

A path object allows us to retrieve information about the file it points to, such as its size and last modification time, using the stat method.

from pathlib import Path

log_file = Path("/var/log/nginx/access.log")
stats = log_file.stat()

The stat method returns a os.stat_result object, which has a lot of attributes. The most useful ones are listed below:

Attributes

Attribute	Description
st_mode	File type and permissions
st_ino	The inode number of Unix and the file index on Windows
st_dev	The device the file resides on
st_nlink	The number of hard links to the file
st_uid	The user ID of the file owner
st_gid	The group ID of the file owner
st_size	The size of the file in bytes

Timestamps

Attribute	Description
st_atime	The last access time of the file in seconds since epoch time
st_mtime	The last modification time of the file in seconds since epoch time
st_ctime	The most recent metadata change expressed in seconds
st_birthtime	The creation time of the file in seconds since epoch time