How can I get the file name with stat?

The stat command, commonly used in Unix-like operating systems, primarily retrieves file metadata, such as size, modification times, permissions, etc. It doesn't directly display just the file name. However, you can use stat in conjunction with other tools to extract the file name.

Here are some approaches to get the file name along with, or using, the stat command:

1. Using stat with Shell Expansion:

The simplest way is often to just use the file path given to stat. For example:

stat my_file.txt

In this case, you already have the name of the file, so stat is not really used to extract the name. If you need to extract the file name from the full path outputted by stat when it's using a wildcard, you can combine it with other command line tools.

2. Using stat output with awk or sed:

If you are working with a wildcard (e.g. stat .txt) and wish to extract just the name you could use:

stat .txt | awk '{print $1}'

Or with sed:

stat .txt | sed 's/\sFile:\s//' | sed 's/\s//'

Both of these will give you the file names for all of the files with a .txt extension.

3. Using basename

If you are working with the output from find, or you have a path and just want the name, you could also use basename directly

basename /path/to/my_file.txt

This will output my_file.txt

Explanation:

- `stat`: This command displays file or file system status.

- `awk '{print $1}'`: This uses awk to print the first word from each line of output.

- `sed 's/\sFile:\s//'` removes the word "File:" and all the leading spaces. The second `sed` command removes any following spaces.

- `basename`: Extracts the base name of a file path.

In summary, while `stat` itself doesn’t directly give you the file name as a single output, you can effectively use it along with shell tools like `awk`, `sed`, or `basename` to get the file name from file paths or the output of stat when using a wildcard.

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