checking whether a folder is empty

Hello.
Could anyone please give me a pointer to where I could find out more about how to do a check in the program whether a folder is empty or not? I dont really know what to search for, so just knowing that would been very usefull for me.

can it be done with fstream in some ways, or is there any own functions to do this?

Dag

If you have windows, call FindFirstFile in the folder. If it returns no result it should be empty. It will find subfolders but these can be checked through flags.

thank you , what about linux?

Ok I did a try now, but somehow it does not work correctly-- it allways goes to the else clause, and there it allways just couts a dot(.), not any files, for example when I input "C:\\WINDOWS\\*".
Can anyone please correct me?

Code:

// Finding first file in a folder test

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>


using std::cout;
using std::cin;
using std::endl;

int main() {

    char folder[100];
    cout << "Enter folder: ";
    cin >> folder;
    
    cout << "Checking " << folder << endl;
        
    WIN32_FIND_DATA found;
    HANDLE hFind;
    hFind = FindFirstFile(folder, &found);
    
    if (found.cFileName == NULL) { // its probably this line, but...... Why?
        cout << "Folder does not exist or folder is empty." << endl; 
    }
    else {    
        cout << found.cFileName << " is the first file in " << folder << endl;
    }    
    
    system("pause");
    
    return 0;   
}

WIN32_FIND_DATA.cFileName is an array so it will never ever whatsoever be NULL.

Check the return value from FindFirstFile instead. If it's INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE no file was found.

thanks

For most OS flavors:
FAQ: Accessing a directory and all the files within it

gg