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14.9 File Attributes

When you issue an ‘ls -l’ shell command on a file, it gives you information about the size of the file, who owns it, when it was last modified, etc. These are called the file attributes, and are associated with the file itself and not a particular one of its names.

This section contains information about how you can inquire about and modify the attributes of a file.

• The meaning of the File Attributes
• Reading the Attributes of a File
• Testing the Type of a File
• File Owner
• The Mode Bits for Access Permission
• How Your Access to a File is Decided
• Assigning File Permissions
• Testing Permission to Access a File
• File Times
• File Size
• Storage Allocation