On the latest snapshot, stat() can succeed against non-existent files. $ ls -l /no/such/file -r-xr-xr-x 1 fujieda Domain U 0 Jan 1 1970 /no/such/file ____ | AIST Kazuhiro Fujieda <fujieda@jaist.ac.jp> | HOKURIKU School of Information Science o_/ 1990 Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology