.\" Copyright (C) 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
.\"
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.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
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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)
.\" If a Debian maintainer sees this: the current Debian page
.\" shows an incorrect struct dirent.
.\"
.TH READDIR 3  "22 April 1996" "" "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 \fBreaddir()\fP function returns a pointer to a dirent 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
The data returned by \fBreaddir()\fP is overwritten by subsequent
calls to \fBreaddir()\fP for the same directory stream.
.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 character.
Use of other fields will harm the portability of your programs.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
The \fBreaddir()\fP function returns a pointer to a dirent structure, or
NULL if an error occurs or end-of-file is reached.
.SH "ERRORS"
.TP
.B EBADF
Invalid directory stream descriptor \fIdir\fP.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
SVID 3, POSIX, BSD 4.3
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR read "(2), " opendir "(3), " closedir "(3), " rewinddir (3),
.BR seekdir "(3), " telldir "(3), " scandir (3)