lstat

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

Gives information about a file or symbolic link

array lstat ( string $filename )

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

Parameters:

filename

Path to a file or a symbolic link.

Returns:

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.

Exception:

Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.

Notes:

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

Examples:

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
)