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GETDIRENTRIES(2) | System Calls Manual | GETDIRENTRIES(2) |
NAME¶
getdirentries, getdents — get directory entries in a file system independent formatLIBRARY¶
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)SYNOPSIS¶
#include <sys/types.h>#include <dirent.h> int
getdirentries(int fd, char *buf, int nbytes, long *basep); int
getdents(int fd, char *buf, int nbytes);
DESCRIPTION¶
The getdirentries() and getdents() system calls read directory entries from the directory referenced by the file descriptor fd into the buffer pointed to by buf, in a file system independent format. Up to nbytes of data will be transferred. The nbytes argument must be greater than or equal to the block size associated with the file, see stat(2). Some file systems may not support these system calls with buffers smaller than this size. The data in the buffer is a series of dirent structures each containing the following entries:u_int32_t d_fileno; u_int16_t d_reclen; u_int8_t d_type; u_int8_t d_namlen; char d_name[MAXNAMELEN + 1]; /* see below */
MAXNAMELEN
+ 1.
Entries may be separated by extra space. The d_reclen
entry may be used as an offset from the start of a
dirent structure to the next structure, if any.
The actual number of bytes transferred is returned. The current position pointer
associated with fd is set to point to the next block of
entries. The pointer may not advance by the number of bytes returned by
getdirentries() or getdents(). A value of
zero is returned when the end of the directory has been reached.
The getdirentries() system call writes the position of the
block read into the location pointed to by basep.
Alternatively, the current position pointer may be set and retrieved by
lseek(2). The current position pointer should only be set to
a value returned by lseek(2), a value returned in the
location pointed to by basep (getdirentries only) or
zero.
RETURN VALUES¶
If successful, the number of bytes actually transferred is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.ERRORS¶
The getdirentries() system call will fail if:- [
EBADF
] - The fd argument is not a valid file descriptor open for reading.
- [
EFAULT
] - Either buf or basep point outside the allocated address space.
- [
EINVAL
] - The file referenced by fd is not a directory, or nbytes is too small for returning a directory entry or block of entries, or the current position pointer is invalid.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
SEE ALSO¶
lseek(2), open(2)HISTORY¶
The getdirentries() system call first appeared in 4.4BSD. The getdents() system call first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.May 3, 1995 | Debian |