stsize

Stsize is a historical or platform-specific name used for a member of the stat structure in some Unix-like systems to represent the size of a file in bytes. In modern POSIX-compliant systems, the standard field is named st_size, and it is part of the struct stat used by facilities such as the stat() and fstat() system calls. On systems where stsize appears, it typically refers to the same data as st_size, often existing as a compatibility alias or an older naming convention.

The st_size value describes the size in bytes of a file. For regular files, it equals the file’s length. For directories and other special file types, the value reflects the size of the directory entry or filesystem-specific representation of that object. Therefore, the exact meaning of st_size can vary depending on the filesystem and operating system, and it may not correspond to a simple count of items in a directory.

Accessing the size involves the stat structure, commonly via stat() or fstat(). After a successful call, the size is retrieved from the st_size field in the struct stat on modern systems. Some legacy code may reference stsize instead, which on those platforms would be equivalent to st_size; portability concerns may require conditional handling or aliases.

In practice, stsize is largely of historical relevance. Contemporary code should rely on st_size as defined by POSIX, and developers working with portable software may include compatibility checks to accommodate systems where stsize exists as an alias. See also stat(2) and struct stat for background on file metadata retrieval.