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<h3 class="section">14.2 Accessing Directories</h3>

<p><a name="index-accessing-directories-1396"></a><a name="index-reading-from-a-directory-1397"></a><a name="index-directories_002c-accessing-1398"></a>
The facilities described in this section let you read the contents of a
directory file.  This is useful if you want your program to list all the
files in a directory, perhaps as part of a menu.

   <p><a name="index-directory-stream-1399"></a>The <code>opendir</code> function opens a <dfn>directory stream</dfn> whose
elements are directory entries.  Alternatively <code>fdopendir</code> can be
used which can have advantages if the program needs to have more
control over the way the directory is opened for reading.  This
allows, for instance, to pass the <code>O_NOATIME</code> flag to
<code>open</code>.

   <p>You use the <code>readdir</code> function on the directory stream to
retrieve these entries, represented as <code>struct&nbsp;dirent</code><!-- /@w -->
objects.  The name of the file for each entry is stored in the
<code>d_name</code> member of this structure.  There are obvious parallels
here to the stream facilities for ordinary files, described in
<a href="I_002fO-on-Streams.html#I_002fO-on-Streams">I/O on Streams</a>.

<ul class="menu">
<li><a accesskey="1" href="Directory-Entries.html#Directory-Entries">Directory Entries</a>:            Format of one directory entry. 
<li><a accesskey="2" href="Opening-a-Directory.html#Opening-a-Directory">Opening a Directory</a>:          How to open a directory stream. 
<li><a accesskey="3" href="Reading_002fClosing-Directory.html#Reading_002fClosing-Directory">Reading/Closing Directory</a>:    How to read directory entries from the stream. 
<li><a accesskey="4" href="Simple-Directory-Lister.html#Simple-Directory-Lister">Simple Directory Lister</a>:      A very simple directory listing program. 
<li><a accesskey="5" href="Random-Access-Directory.html#Random-Access-Directory">Random Access Directory</a>:      Rereading part of the directory
                                 already read with the same stream. 
<li><a accesskey="6" href="Scanning-Directory-Content.html#Scanning-Directory-Content">Scanning Directory Content</a>:   Get entries for user selected subset of
                                 contents in given directory. 
<li><a accesskey="7" href="Simple-Directory-Lister-Mark-II.html#Simple-Directory-Lister-Mark-II">Simple Directory Lister Mark II</a>:   Revised version of the program. 
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