help with struct command in C

Applications Programming
1

in C i am using this code to get the c time or a time or m time

    struct dirent *dir;
    struct stat my;
     stat(what, &my);
     thetime = my.st_ctime;

How can i check if i have permission to check the c time of the file?

2

stat returns -1 on error.

  if(stat(what, &my) == -1)
  { 
     perror("Cannot stat file");
     exit(1);
  }

OR before doing anything with a file call access() which is specifically meant to check permissions + access to file