I'm using a Macbook Pro running El Capitan v 10.11.6. I am learning about symlinks, and in the man ln page, I found the following:

A stat(2) on a symbolic link will return the linked-to file; an lstat(2) must be done to obtain information about the link.

As a test, I created a symlink to a file (in another filesystem, if it matters), as follows:

ln -s /Volumes/foobardir/foobarfile foobarlink

Then I ran lstat foobarlink to get information on the symlink file itself, but I got the following output:

-bash: lstat: command not found

The command which lstat returns nothing, which confirms that there is no executable with this name in my filepath.

I am able to execute stat foobarlink, but I am not sure if the returned stats are for the linked file or the symlink itself. I do see today's date in timestamp form among the output for that command, while running stat foobarfile shows a date from a few months ago. So I'm guessing this is the output I'm looking for, but I'd like a 2nd opinion.

By the way, running which stat returns /usr/bin/stat. A grep in the /usr/bin directory for all executables with stat in their name returns the following:

• db_stat
• diffstat
• httpdstat.d
• jstat
• jstatd
• lockstat
• lpstat
• nfsstat
• plockstat
• snmpnetstat
• snmpstatus
• stat
• uustat
• vm_stat

As I stated above, my guess is that stat returns the output that I had expected lstat to return. My questions are:

• why is lstat apparently not installed in my system, when man lstat recognizes lstat as a valid command?
• Why include manual information for an executable you don't ship with?
• brew search lstat returns no results. Is it possible to install lstat to my local machine somehow, and are there even any advantages to doing so?