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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 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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