READDIR

NAME

SYNOPSIS

#include <dirent.h>

struct dirent *readdir(DIR *dirp);

int readdir_r(DIR *dirp, struct dirent *entry, struct dirent **result);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

readdir_r(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 1 || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _POSIX_SOURCE  

DESCRIPTION

On Linux, the dirent structure is defined as follows:

struct dirent {
    ino_t          d_ino;       /* inode number */
    off_t          d_off;       /* offset to the next dirent */
    unsigned short d_reclen;    /* length of this record */
    unsigned char  d_type;      /* type of file; not supported
                                   by all file system types */
    char           d_name[256]; /* filename */
};

The only fields in the dirent structure that are mandated by POSIX.1 are: d_name[], of unspecified size, with at most NAME_MAX characters preceding the terminating null byte; and (as an XSI extension) d_ino. The other fields are unstandardized, and not present on all systems; see NOTES below for some further details.

The data returned by readdir() may be overwritten by subsequent calls to readdir() for the same directory stream.

The readdir_r() function is a reentrant version of readdir(). It reads the next directory entry from the directory stream dirp, and returns it in the caller-allocated buffer pointed to by entry. (See NOTES for information on allocating this buffer.) A pointer to the returned item is placed in *result; if the end of the directory stream was encountered, then NULL is instead returned in *result.  

RETURN VALUE

The readdir_r() function returns 0 on success. On error, it returns a positive error number. If the end of the directory stream is reached, readdir_r() returns 0, and returns NULL in *result.  

ERRORS

EBADF

Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

CONFORMING TO

NOTES

Other than Linux, the d_type field is available mainly only on BSD systems. This field makes it possible to avoid the expense of calling lstat(2) if further actions depend on the type of the file. If the _BSD_SOURCE feature test macro is defined, then glibc defines the following macro constants for the value returned in d_type:

DT_BLK

This is a block device.

DT_CHR

This is a character device.

DT_DIR

This is a directory.

DT_FIFO

This is a named pipe (FIFO).

DT_LNK

This is a symbolic link.

DT_REG

This is a regular file.

DT_SOCK

This is a Unix domain socket.

DT_UNKNOWN

The file type is unknown.

If the file type could not be determined, the value DT_UNKNOWN is returned in d_type.

Currently, only some file systems (among them: Btrfs, ext2, etx3, and ext4) have full support returning the file type in d_type. All applications must properly handle a return of DT_UNKNOWN.

Since POSIX.1 does not specify the size of the d_name field, and other non-standard fields may precede that field within the dirent structure, portable applications that use readdir_r() should allocate the buffer whose address is passed in entry as follows:

len = offsetof(struct dirent, d_name) +
          pathconf(dirpath, _PC_NAME_MAX) + 1
entryp = malloc(len);

SEE ALSO

COLOPHON