The GNU C Library - Reading/Closing Directory

Reading and Closing a Directory Stream

This section describes how to read directory entries from a directory stream, and how to close the stream when you are done with it. All the symbols are declared in the header file `dirent.h'.

Function struct dirent * readdir (DIR *dirstream)

This function reads the next entry from the directory. It normally returns a pointer to a structure containing information about the file. This structure is statically allocated and can be rewritten by a subsequent call.

Portability Note: On some systems, readdir may not return entries for `.' and `..', even though these are always valid file names in any directory. See File Name Resolution.

If there are no more entries in the directory or an error is detected, readdir returns a null pointer. The following errno error conditions are defined for this function:

EBADF

The dirstream argument is not valid.

Function int closedir (DIR *dirstream)

This function closes the directory stream dirstream. It returns 0 on success and -1 on failure.

The following errno error conditions are defined for this function:

EBADF

The dirstream argument is not valid.