StatFTime is a Linux command line utility for looking up information about a file, including its size, inode and date last modified. Unlike similar tools like stat(1), statftime lets you format the results the way you would with the date(1) command.

Besides giving access to important file information to a shell script, another typical use for statftime would be to rename files for archiving purposes. If a business receives a file of customer orders called "orders.txt", it can create a unique archiving name such as "orders-2001-037.txt" using

where "%_a" is the root filename, "%_C" selects the creation date, "%Y" is the creation date year, and "%f" is the creation date day of year. There are more than 50 supported "%" codes.

StatFTime can also process a list of files from standard input.

Install using the following commands:

$ tar xfvz statftime.tgz
$ cd statftime
$ make
$ cp statftime /usr/local/bin