i have used all forms of the unix find command.. and right now this is the only command i can think of that might have this option..:
if i use mtime i am looking at a time interval.. but if i wanted to find out intervals of access, change and modification according to when a file changed size "and what that size was!" how would i go about doing this.. i can only think this is so obvious and i have missed the point completely or that there is really no such thing..:
ex,. find -type f etc printf "%...%...%\n"
5065 Feb 2 00:59:59 file[abc]..
(just an example)
but this read out should give the size of the file before the last modification (or access etc)...
if there is any such thing please clue me in..
thanx moxxx68

No history is maintained like that. There is no way to find out what the size was before the last write. Besides, suppose you did:
cat littlefile >> bigfile
The kernel might do 1 write to bigfile. Or it might do 100 writes to bigfile. So the size before the last write would not be useful anyway.

thats what I was afraid of.. can you suggest a command or a find invocation that would give a double precision form of stating files.. I have tried them all stat, find, du, etc.. what I need is something that will give me precision and quantative data.. on a file. does this command exist? forinstance what is quota?
moxxx68

Like you said, you tried them all. That's all there is.

thanks for the reply,
i guess I will just have to make do with the commands I tried..
moxxx68