.\" Copyright (C) 1995 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl) .\" .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are .\" preserved on all copies. .\" .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a .\" permission notice identical to this one. .\" .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.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 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working .\" professionally. .\" .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" .\" Written 11 June 1995 by Andries Brouwer .\" Modified 22 July 1995 by Michael Chastain : .\" Derived from 'readdir.2'. .\" Modified Tue Oct 22 08:11:14 EDT 1996 by Eric S. Raymond .TH GETDENTS 2 2012-08-03 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME getdents \- get directory entries .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .BI "int getdents(unsigned int " fd ", struct linux_dirent *" dirp , .BI " unsigned int " count ); .fi .IR Note : There is no glibc wrapper for this system call; see NOTES. .SH DESCRIPTION This is not the function you are interested in. Look at .BR readdir (3) for the POSIX conforming C library interface. This page documents the bare kernel system call interface. .PP The system call .BR getdents () reads several .I linux_dirent structures from the directory referred to by the open file descriptor .I fd into the buffer pointed to by .IR dirp . The argument .I count specifies the size of that buffer. .PP The .I linux_dirent structure is declared as follows: .PP .in +4n .nf struct linux_dirent { unsigned long d_ino; /* Inode number */ unsigned long d_off; /* Offset to next \fIlinux_dirent\fP */ unsigned short d_reclen; /* Length of this \fIlinux_dirent\fP */ char d_name[]; /* Filename (null-terminated) */ /* length is actually (d_reclen \- 2 \- offsetof(struct linux_dirent, d_name) */ /* char pad; // Zero padding byte char d_type; // File type (only since Linux 2.6.4; // offset is (d_reclen \- 1)) */ } .fi .in .PP .I d_ino is an inode number. .I d_off is the distance from the start of the directory to the start of the next .IR linux_dirent . .I d_reclen is the size of this entire .IR linux_dirent . .I d_name is a null-terminated filename. .I d_type is a byte at the end of the structure that indicates the file type. It contains one of the following values (defined in .IR ): .TP 12 .B DT_BLK This is a block device. .TP .B DT_CHR This is a character device. .TP .B DT_DIR This is a directory. .TP .B DT_FIFO This is a named pipe (FIFO). .TP .B DT_LNK This is a symbolic link. .TP .B DT_REG This is a regular file. .TP .B DT_SOCK This is a UNIX domain socket. .TP .B DT_UNKNOWN The file type is unknown. .PP The .I d_type field is implemented since Linux 2.6.4. It occupies a space that was previously a zero-filled padding byte in the .IR linux_dirent structure. Thus, on kernels before 2.6.3, attempting to access this field always provides the value 0 .RB ( DT_UNKNOWN ). .PP Currently, .\" kernel 2.6.27 .\" The same sentence is in readdir.2 only some file systems (among them: Btrfs, ext2, ext3, and ext4) have full support for returning the file type in .IR d_type . All applications must properly handle a return of .BR DT_UNKNOWN . .SH "RETURN VALUE" On success, the number of bytes read is returned. On end of directory, 0 is returned. On error, \-1 is returned, and .I errno is set appropriately. .SH ERRORS .TP .B EBADF Invalid file descriptor .IR fd . .TP .B EFAULT Argument points outside the calling process's address space. .TP .B EINVAL Result buffer is too small. .TP .B ENOENT No such directory. .TP .B ENOTDIR File descriptor does not refer to a directory. .SH "CONFORMING TO" SVr4. .\" SVr4 documents additional ENOLINK, EIO error conditions. .SH NOTES Glibc does not provide a wrapper for this system call; call it using .BR syscall (2). You will need to define the .I linux_dirent structure yourself. However, you probably want to use .BR readdir (3) instead. This call supersedes .BR readdir (2). The original Linux .BR getdents () system call did not handle large file systems and large file offsets. Consequently, Linux 2.4 added .BR getdents64 (), with wider types for the .I d_ino and .I d_off fields employed in the .IR linux_dirent structure. .SH EXAMPLE .\" FIXME: This program uses the older getdents(0 system call .\" and the structure with smaller field widths. The program below demonstrates the use of .BR getdents (). The following output shows an example of what we see when running this program on an ext2 directory: .in +4n .nf .RB "$" " ./a.out /testfs/" --------------- nread=120 --------------- i-node# file type d_reclen d_off d_name 2 directory 16 12 . 2 directory 16 24 .. 11 directory 24 44 lost+found 12 regular 16 56 a 228929 directory 16 68 sub 16353 directory 16 80 sub2 130817 directory 16 4096 sub3 .fi .in .SS Program source \& .nf #define _GNU_SOURCE #include /* Defines DT_* constants */ #include #include #include #include #include #include #define handle_error(msg) \\ do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } while (0) struct linux_dirent { long d_ino; off_t d_off; unsigned short d_reclen; char d_name[]; }; #define BUF_SIZE 1024 int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int fd, nread; char buf[BUF_SIZE]; struct linux_dirent *d; int bpos; char d_type; fd = open(argc > 1 ? argv[1] : ".", O_RDONLY | O_DIRECTORY); if (fd == \-1) handle_error("open"); for ( ; ; ) { nread = syscall(SYS_getdents, fd, buf, BUF_SIZE); if (nread == \-1) handle_error("getdents"); if (nread == 0) break; printf("\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- nread=%d \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\\n", nread); printf("i\-node# file type d_reclen d_off d_name\\n"); for (bpos = 0; bpos < nread;) { d = (struct linux_dirent *) (buf + bpos); printf("%8ld ", d\->d_ino); d_type = *(buf + bpos + d\->d_reclen \- 1); printf("%\-10s ", (d_type == DT_REG) ? "regular" : (d_type == DT_DIR) ? "directory" : (d_type == DT_FIFO) ? "FIFO" : (d_type == DT_SOCK) ? "socket" : (d_type == DT_LNK) ? "symlink" : (d_type == DT_BLK) ? "block dev" : (d_type == DT_CHR) ? "char dev" : "???"); printf("%4d %10lld %s\\n", d\->d_reclen, (long long) d\->d_off, d\->d_name); bpos += d\->d_reclen; } } exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } .fi .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR readdir (2), .BR readdir (3) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux .I man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.