Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

An intelligent implementation could avoid reading the file.
But otherwise, the answer is that it's not possible portably.
Drop down to the POSIX API.

How does one do that? Is there an example somewhere?

(defun file-length-in-bytes (file)
;; Note the "EXT" implementation specific package.
(with-open-stream (in (ext:run-program "/bin/ls"
:arguments (list "-l" (namestring file))
:output :stream))
(read in)(read in)(read in)(read in)(read in)))

Alternatively, one could use FFI:

(defun file-length-in-bytes (file)
(multiple-value-bind (res stat) (linux:stat (namestring file))
(linux:|stat-st_size| stat)))

Gauche Scheme:

(use file.util)
(file-size "data.txt")


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