man-pages/man3/readdir.3

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.\" Copyright (C) 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
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.\" References consulted:
.\" Linux libc source code
.\" Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
.\" 386BSD man pages
.\" Modified Sat Jul 24 16:09:49 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" Modified 11 June 1995 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\" Modified 22 July 1996 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\"
.TH READDIR 3 1996-04-22 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
readdir \- read a directory
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <sys/types.h>
.sp
.B #include <dirent.h>
.sp
.BI "struct dirent *readdir(DIR *" dir );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR readdir ()
function returns a pointer to a \fIdirent\fP structure
representing the next directory entry in the directory stream pointed
to by \fIdir\fP.
It returns NULL on reaching the end-of-file or if
an error occurred.
.PP
On Linux, the
.I dirent
structure is defined as follows:
.PP
.RS 0.25i
.nf
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 */
char d_name[256]; /* filename */
};
.fi
.RE
.PP
According to POSIX, the
.I dirent
structure contains a field
.I "char d_name[]"
of unspecified size, with at most
.B NAME_MAX
characters preceding the terminating null byte.
POSIX.1-2001 also documents the field
.I "ino_t d_ino"
as an XSI extension.
.IR "Use of other fields will harm the portability of your programs" .
.PP
The data returned by
.BR readdir ()
may be overwritten by subsequent
calls to
.BR readdir ()
for the same directory stream.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
The
.BR readdir ()
function returns a pointer to a
.I dirent
structure, or
NULL if an error occurs or end-of-file is reached.
On error,
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EBADF
Invalid directory stream descriptor \fIdir\fP.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR read (2),
.BR closedir (3),
.BR dirfd (3),
.BR ftw (3),
.BR opendir (3),
.BR rewinddir (3),
.BR scandir (3),
.BR seekdir (3),
.BR telldir (3)