Bravo, I just wanted to post the suggest for File::stat but you beat me to it. I would suggest you not return -1 for two things that could be a result of a vastly different failure, and I would instead die if I failed to stat the object. I also wouldn't import stat() as failing to include File::stat would surely result in a runtime error, and not the expected compile-time. (in addition two names for the same function has a potential to confuse, as does pollution is any form)