NAME
dirent.h — format of directory streams and directory entries
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <dirent.h>
DESCRIPTION
This header file defines data types used by
the directory stream routines described in
directory(3C).
The following data types are defined:
- DIR
A structure containing information about an open directory stream.
- struct dirent
A structure defining the format of entries returned
by the
readdir()
function (see
directory(3C)).
The
struct dirent
structure includes the following members:
char d_name[MAXNAMLEN+1]; /* name of directory entry */
ino_t d_ino; /* file serial number */
short d_namlen; /* length of string in d_name */
short d_reclen; /* length of this record */
The constant
MAXNAMLEN
is defined in
<dirent.h>.
Note that the
d_reclen
entry is used internally to represent the offset
from the current entry to the next valid entry.
Therefore,
d_reclen
is not the length of the current entry,
but the length of the current record
where a record is an entry plus any currently unused space
between the current entry and the next valid entry.
The unused space between valid
dirent
entries results from changes in a directory's contents,
such as the deletion of files and other directories.
This file also contains external declarations for the
functions that perform directory operations
(see
directory(3C)).
WARNINGS
For 32-bit applications, the
d_ino
field may overflow for filesystems
that use 64-bit values. In this case, the most-significant bytes will
be truncated without error, and the value may not be unique.
AUTHOR
<dirent.h>
was developed by AT&T and HP.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
<dirent.h>: AES, SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, FIPS 151-2, POSIX.1
Printable version
