About stat function and reading the file path from a variable

[aborruso]

Hi,
if I run

echo 'file="tmp.txt"' | mlr --oxtab put '$file_info=stat($file)'

I get

file      "tmp.txt"
file_info (error)

If I hard code it

echo 'file="tmp.txt"' | mlr --oxtab put '$file_info=stat("tmp.txt")'

I get the right result

file              "tmp.txt"
file_info.name    tmp.txt
file_info.size    6
file_info.mode    0644
file_info.modtime 1728150479
file_info.isdir   false

The input of stat must be class=system, and I have a string. Is there any way to convert the value of a string variable to system?

Thank you

[johnkerl]

The system bit is only a documentation category, not a runtime type ... no conversion issue.

Something else is up -- I'll look.

[johnkerl]

@aborruso two things: one is that " isn't part of the filename; the other is that stat returns a map not a single value.

$ echo 'file=tmp.txt' | mlr --ojson put '$file_info=stat($file)'
[
{
  "file": "tmp.txt",
  "file_info": {
    "name": "tmp.txt",
    "size": 0,
    "mode": 0644,
    "modtime": 1728225438,
    "isdir": false
  }
}
]

$ echo 'file=tmp.txt' | mlr --oxtab put '$file_info=stat($file)'
file              tmp.txt
file_info.name    tmp.txt
file_info.size    0
file_info.mode    0644
file_info.modtime 1728225438
file_info.isdir   false

[aborruso]

returns a map not a single value.

I know it, thank you. My stupid error is related to default mlr format: I thought it was necessary to put a string in double quotes.

Thank you

[johnkerl]

All good @aborruso ! It would be nice if someday DKVP could take quotes just as CSV does -- #266