dirent.5 (2010 09)

d
dirent(5) dirent(5)
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() func-
tion (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.
SEE ALSO
directory(3C).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
<dirent.h>: AES, SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, FIPS 151-2, POSIX.1
HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010 − 1 − Hewlett-Packard Company 1