This is in reference to the structure for information about a file inode:
dev_t st_dev; /* ID of device containing file */
ino_t st_ino; /* inode number */
mode_t st_mode; /* protection */
nlink_t st_nlink; /* number of hard links */
uid_t st_uid; /* user ID of owner */
gid_t st_gid; /* group ID of owner */
dev_t st_rdev; /* device ID (if special file) */
off_t st_size; /* total size, in bytes */
time_t st_atime; /* time of last access */
time_t st_mtime; /* time of last modification */
time_t st_ctime; /* time of last status change */
blksize_t st_blksize; /* blocksize for filesystem I/O */
blkcnt_t st_blocks; /* number of blocks allocated */
I'm just looking for any type of answer really. I noticed all fields begin with st_ and can not find a good explanation on the Internet.
This goes back a long way, all the way to the first C versions. They didn't have a seperate symbol table for structure members, the names were added to the global symbol table. With the obvious nasty global namespace pollution that causes. The workaround was the same one you use on enums today, prefix them with a couple of letters to avoid the name collisions.
It's sort of a historical record. When you see a struct with these kind of member names, you know it is old.